The direct route from St. Louis to Florissant is an excellent one, over a high rolling prairie, and commands a noble sweep of scenery. From several elevated points, the white cliffs beyond the American Bottom, more than twenty miles distant, may be seen, while farmhouses and villas are beheld in all directions gleaming through the groves. Scenery of the same general character presents itself upon the direct route to St. Charles, with the exception of steeper hills and broader plains. Upon this route my path entered nearly at right angles soon after leaving the French village. Upon the right shore of the Missouri, not far above Florissant, is situated _La Charbonnière_, a name given to a celebrated coal-bank in a bluff about two hundred feet in altitude, and about twice as long.[163] The stratum of coal is about a dozen feet in thickness, and lies directly upon the margin of the river: the quantity in the bank is said to be immense, and it contains an unusual proportion of bitumen. Iron ore has also been discovered at this spot. The road over the Missouri Bottom was detestable, as never fails to be the case after a continued rain-storm, and my horse's leg sank to the middle in the black, unctuous loam almost at every step. Upon either side, like colonnades, rose up those {250} enormous shafts of living verdure which strike the solitary traveller upon these unfrequented bottoms with such awe and veneration; while the huge whirls of the writhing wild-vine hung dangling, like gigantic serpents, from the lofty columns around whose capitals they clung. On descending the bluffs to the bottom, the traveller crosses a bed of limestone, in which is said to exist a fissure perfectly fathomless. In a few moments, the boiling, turbid floods of the Missouri are beheld rolling majestically along at the feet, and to the stranger's eye, at first sight, always suggesting the idea of _unusual_ agitation; but so have they rolled onward century after century, age after age. The wild and impetuous character of this river, together with the vast quantities of soil with which its waters are charged, impart to it a natural sublimity far more striking, at first view, than that of the Mississippi. This circumstance was not unobserved by the Indian tribes, who appropriately named it the "_Smoky Water_:" by others it was styled the "_Mad River_," on account of the impetuosity of its current; and in all dialects it is called the "_Mother of Floods_," indicative of the immense volume of its waters. Various causes have been assigned for the turbid character of the Missouri: and though, doubtless, heavily charged by the volumes of sand thrown into its channel by the Yellow Stone--its longest tributary, equal to the Ohio--and by the chalky clay of the White River, yet we are told that it is characterized by the same phenomenon from its very source. At the gates of the Rocky Mountains, where, having torn {251} for itself