The steam-engine, second only to the press in power, has in a few years anticipated results throughout the New World which centuries, in the ordinary course of cause and event, would have failed to produce. The dullest forester, even the cold, phlegmatic native of the wilderness, gazes upon its display of beautiful mechanism, its majestic march upon its element, and its sublimity of power, with astonishment and admiration. Return we to the incidents of our passage. During the morning of our third day upon the Ohio we {35} passed, among others, the villages of _Rome_, _Troy_, and Rockport.[20] The latter is the most considerable place of the three, notwithstanding _imposing_ titles. It is situated upon a green romantic spot, the summit of a precipitous pile of rocks some hundred feet in height, from which sweeps off a level region of country in the rear. Here terminates that series of beautiful bluffs commencing at the confluence of the mountain-streams, and of which so much has been said. A new geological formation commences of a bolder character than any before; and the face of the country gradually assumes those features which are found near the mouth of the river. Passing Green River with its emerald waters,[21] its "Diamond Island,"[22] the largest in the Ohio, and said to be _haunted_, and very many thriving villages, among which was Hendersonville,[23] for some time the residence of Audubon,[24] the ornithologist, we found ourselves near midday at the mouth of the smiling Wabash, its high bluffs crowned with groves of the walnut and pecan, the _carya olivoeformis_ of Nuttal, and its deep-died surface reflecting the yet deeper tints of its verdure-clad banks, as the far-winding stream gradually opened upon the eye, and then retreated in the distance. The confluence of the streams is at a beautiful angle; and, on observing the scene, the traveller will remark that the forests upon one bank are superior in magnitude to those on the other, though of the same species. The appearance is somewhat singular, and the fact is to be accounted for only from the reason that the soil {36} differs in alluvial character. It has been thought that no stream in the world, for its length and magnitude, drains a more fertile and beautiful country than the Wabash and its tributaries.[25] Emigrants are rapidly settling its banks, and a route has been projected for uniting by canal its waters with those of Lake Erie; surveys by authority of the State of Indiana have been made, and incipient measures taken preparatory to carrying the work into execution.[26]