The most beautiful tributary of the Mississippi is the Ohio, the _Belle rivière_ of the early French settlers, the only large river it receives from the east. No stream rolls for the same distance so uniformly and peacefully; its banks are adorned with the largest sycamores, its waters clear, and studded with islands covered with the finest trees. All the other great tributaries flow from the west: its confluence with the Missouri, which enters it like a conqueror, and carries its white waves to the opposite shore, presenting one of the most extraordinary views in the world. The country around these vast watercourses is of the most varied description, alternately exhibiting wild rice-lakes and swamps, lime-stone bluffs and craggy hills, deep pine forests and beautiful prairies, the prairies showing an almost perfect level, in summer covered with a luxuriant growth of grass and flowers, without a tree or a bush, the only tenants of which are elks and buffaloes, bears and deer, and the savages that pursue them. The bluffs of the Mississippi are for the most part perpendicular masses of limestone, often shooting up into towers and pinnacles, presenting at a distance the aspect of the battlements and turrets of an ancient city. In the season of inundation, below the mouth of the Ohio, the river presents a very striking spectacle. It sweeps along in curves or sections of circles, from six to twelve miles in extent, measured from point to point, and not far from the medial width of a mile. On a calm spring morning, and under a bright sun, this sheet of water shines like a mass of burnished silver, its edges being distinctly marked by a magnificent outline of cotton-wood trees, at this time of the year of the brightest verdure, among which those brilliant birds of the country, the black and red bird, and the blue jay, flit to and fro, or wheel their flight over them, forming a scene which has all of grandeur or beauty that nature can furnish, to soothe or enrapture the beholder. The curvilinear course of the Mississippi is one of its most striking peculiarities. It meanders in uniform bends, which, in many instances, are described with a precision equal to that obtained by the point of a compass. The river sweeps round the half of a circle, and is then precipitated in a diagonal direction across its own channel, to another curve of the same regularity upon the opposite shore. Instead of calculating distances by miles or leagues, the boatmen and Indians estimate their progress by the number of bends which they have passed. This conformation, which distinguishes most of the streams of the Mississippi valley, must have transpired under the operation of some law; but hitherto no solution of the problem has been given which is quite satisfactory. Geological appearances indicate that this stream, like the Orinoco, had in former ages a much broader volume, though a shorter course; that, in fact, it once found its estuary not