Leaving the Bottom, the road winds gracefully off from the Mississippi, over the hard soil of the bluffs, through a region broken up by sink-holes, and covered with a meager growth of oaks, with small farms at intervals along the route, until at length the traveller finds himself at that beautiful spot on the Missouri, Belle Fontaine, fifteen miles from St. Louis. On account of the salubrity and beauty of the site, an army cantonment was located here by General Wilkinson in the early part of the present century, and fortifications consisting of palisade-work existed, and a line of log-barracks sufficient to quarter half a regiment. Nothing now remains but a pile of ruins. "The barracks have crumpled into dust, and the ploughshare has passed over the promenade of the sentinel." Jefferson Barracks, in the southern environs of the city, have superseded the old fortress, and the spot has been sold to a company, which has here laid off a town; and as most of the lots have been disposed of, and a turnpike-road from St. Louis has been chartered, a succeeding tourist may, at no distant period, pencil it in his notebook "a flourishing village." _Cold Water Creek_ is the name of a clear stream which empties itself into the Missouri just above, upon which are several mill-privileges; and from the base of the bluff itself gushes a fountain, on account {247} of which the place received its name from the French. The site for the new town is a commanding and beautiful one, being a bold, green promontory, rising from the margin of the stream about four miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. The view developed to the eye of the spectator from this spot on a fine day is one of mingled sublimity and beauty. For some miles these old giants of the West are beheld roaming along through their deep, fertile valleys, so different in character and aspect that one can hardly reconcile with that diversity the fact that their destiny is soon to become _one_ and unchangeably the same. And then comes the mighty "meeting of the waters," to which no pen can hope to render justice. There is a singular circumstance related of the discovery of a large _human tooth_ many years since at Belle Fontaine, in excavating a well, when at the depth of forty feet. This was the more extraordinary as the spot was not alluvion, and could have undergone no change from natural causes for centuries. Various strata of clay were passed through before the _tooth_ was thrown up; and this circumstance, together with the situation of the place, would almost preclude the possibility of a vein of subterraneous water having conveyed it to the spot. This is mysterious enough, certainly; but the fact is authentic.