The country west of the Mississippi, opposite the American Bottom, is of a very different character. The high lands approach the river, presenting abrupt declivities, prominent points, and in many places perpendicular precipices from one to two hundred {48} feet high, frowning over the brink of the river. One of the most remarkable of these is known by the name of the Cornice Rock. It bounds a narrow arm of the river, which has generally sufficient water to admit the passage of boats. The rock extends nearly in a straight line, having a front of about four hundred yards, the brow of the precipice at some points impending over the channel through which boats pass. The rock rises above, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, smoothly rounded by the attrition of the water, which never rising to the upper part of the precipice, leaves that to project in the form of a cornice. Though the lands on the west side of the Mississippi are less fertile than those of the American Bottom, they are of great value, and have long been objects of scandalous speculation. Among a variety of stratagems, practised in this part of the country to obtain titles to lands, was one which will be best explained by the following anecdote, related to us by a respectable citizen of St. Genevieve. Preparatory to taking possession of Louisiana in 1805, the legislature passed a law, authorising a claim to one section of land, in favour of any person who should have actually made _improvements_, in any part of the same, previous to the year 1804. Commissioners were appointed to settle all claims of this description; more commonly known by the name of improvement rights. A person, somewhere in the county of Cape Girardeau, being desirous of establishing a claim of this kind to a tract of land, adopted the following method:--The time having expired for the establishment of a right, agreeably to the spirit of the law, he took with him two witnesses to the favourite spot, on which he wished to establish his claim, and in their presence marked two trees, standing on opposite sides of a spring; one with the figures 1803, the other 1804, and placed a stalk of growing corn in the spring. He then brought the witnesses before the commissioners, who upon their {49} declaration, that they had seen corn growing at the place specified, in the spring between 1803 and 1804, admitted the claim of the applicant, and gave him a title to the land. In the old district of Cape Girardeau, as in other parts of Louisiana, the difficulty of establishing indisputable titles to the lands, arising out of the great number of Spanish grants, pre-emption, and improvement claims, has greatly retarded the settlement of the country.[069] Establishments were made here more than one hundred and fifty years since; yet the features of the country are little changed, retaining the rudeness and gloominess of the original forest.[070]