often in fording the river, which may at many places be done without wetting the saddle-girths, looked up the bed. Smooth and transparent as glass, rolling over pebbles of silex and crystal, it looks like a band of silver beneath the arched boughs of the aspen and gigantic walnut trees, while the immediate banks were fringed by the long-leaved willow and cane. Not unfrequently a single glance would reveal to me, when lost in admiration at the quiet beauty of such a scene, another of a far different yet equally pleasing style. The current would quicken—small islets would appear, scarcely more than a rood in breadth, against which the waters would leap and lash themselves into fury. The current would quicken yet more, and in the distance a rugged mountain would be seen. Against the base of this the waters would rush and whirl into eddies over the seething surface of which wild-fowl almost constantly floated. The low grounds on the river abounded with the sloe or scuppanon, and at distances of every mile or two, natural vineyards, bearing a large, rich, luscious grape, without a particle of the musky flavor which characterises almost all the American _uvæ_, were seen. So immense were these vines that they ran from tree to tree, masking every thing with their foliage, and displaying their grand clusters over the barren limbs of the stunted oak or hickory. I have called the Illinois a beautiful river, and have spoken of the lucidness of its water—I can give an illustration of the latter which is most apropos. Several years since I was stationed on the bank of this stream with a small detachment of men, and without any other officer. In the long August days, when the prairies were burned, and scarcely a breath of air was to be had in the forests, I used to while away many weary hours upon the banks of the river either fishing or bathing. One day I amused myself with an Indian lance in killing the fine buffalo-fish, which I could see distinctly in the translucent waters. I had _posed_ myself on the bow of the boat in pursuit of one peculiarly large fish which shot up the stream with the rapidity of an arrow. The soldier who sat at the stern of the boat, a very active and nervous man, (he was killed, poor fellow, at the storming of Taos, in New Mexico,) drove the boat after the quarry with scarcely less rapidity. At last I had overtaken him, the boat hung above him, like a gigantic leaf in the atmosphere, which could scarcely be distinguished from the water below. Poising myself, I drove the lance into the fish, and a second afterward, to my amazement, was floundering ten feet below the surface of the water, and probably yet twenty from the pebbly bottom. I would have sworn the water was not more than four feet deep, and scrambled out I know not how, for I could never swim—not, however, until I had upset the boat and made poor Orndorf a sharer in my calamity. The clearness of the water, surpassing any thing