The majestic river from the Balize to the Fall of St. Anthony, I have just passed over; with a high-wrought mind filled with amazement and wonder, like other travellers who occasionally leave the stale and profitless routine of the “Fashionable Tour,” to gaze with admiration upon the wild and native grandeur and majesty of this great Western world. The Upper Mississippi, like the Upper Missouri, must be approached to be appreciated; for all that can be seen on the Mississippi below St. Louis, or for several hundred miles above it, gives no hint or clue to the magnificence of the scenes which are continually opening to the view of the traveller, and riveting him to the deck of the steamer, through sunshine, lightning or rain, from the mouth of the Ouisconsin to the Fall of St. Anthony. The traveller in ascending the river, will see but little of picturesque beauty in the landscape, until he reaches Rock Island; and from that point he will find it growing gradually more interesting, until he reaches Prairie du Chien; and from that place until he arrives at Lake Pepin, every reach and turn in the river presents to his eye a more immense and magnificent scene of grandeur and beauty. From day to day, the eye is riveted in listless, tireless admiration, upon the thousand bluffs which tower in majesty above the river on either side, and alternate as the river bends, into countless fascinating forms. The whole face of the country is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass, whether there is timber or not; and the magnificent bluffs, studding the sides of the river, and rising in the forms of immense cones, domes and ramparts, give peculiar pleasure, from the deep and soft green in which they are clad up their broad sides, and to their extreme tops, with a carpet of grass, with spots and clusters of timber of a deeper green; and apparently in many places, arranged in orchards and pleasure-grounds by the hands of art.