We passed to-day St. Genevieve, a French village standing on a beautiful hill-side. The loveliest prospect stretched out before the town. We could from this point see the broad Mississippi in its magnificent course piercing the boundless forests of eternal verdure, and spreading out its watery surface upon which a hundred green islets seemed to float. The town itself, like all the French villages that we have seen on this river, appeared old and dilapidated, and quite destitute of every thing like improvement, or enterprise. I could not but contrast these French villages, in the midst of this rich luxuriant land, with their little Roman Catholic chapels, their low narrow houses, and abundant marks of poverty, with the neat, tidy, thriving villages of New England, which, although they rear their heads from a hard rocky soil, where industry has to be taxed to the utmost to obtain the means of subsistence, present--in their beautiful church edifices--their elegant public buildings, and well constructed private residences--marks of thrift, industry, and comfort, which cannot fail to gladden the heart of the traveller who passes through them. Such is the difference in their influences between Protestantism and Romanism. Twelve miles before we reached St. Louis we passed Jefferson barracks, a military station on the Missouri shore, located on a beautiful swell of land. Carondolet is another French village on the banks of the Mississippi, around which every thing appears ruinous and poverty stricken. At length St. Louis rose to view, and we hailed the sight with no ordinary sensations, not only as it was to be our resting place for awhile, but as a point of exceeding interest in this vast western world. CHAPTER VIII. THE MISSISSIPPI AND SOME OF ITS TRIBUTARIES. St. Louis--Roman cathedral--Desecration of the Sabbath--Golden sunsets--Sail up the Mississippi--The meeting of the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi--Alton--The burning prairie. _St. Louis, Tuesday Evening, July 4th._