One gets so accustomed in the lakes, rivers and harbours of America, to vast expanses of water, that the first sight of the Mississippi at New Orleans becomes on that account more disappointing to most people than it otherwise would be. As you cross the Levee, you see before you a stream not three quarters of a mile wide. The houses on the opposite side do not appear to be at even that humble distance. The traveller remembers how many streams he has crossed, particularly on the eastern and southern coast, some of them even unnoticed on the map he is carrying with him, but which had wider channels. And so he becomes dissatisfied with his first view of the Father of Waters. Still, there he has before him, in that stream not three quarters of a mile wide, the outlet for the waters of a valley as large as half of Europe. What mighty rivers, commingled together, are passing before him—the Arkansas, the Red River, the Platte, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Wabash, the Cumberland, the Tennessee! How great then must be the depth of the channel through which this vast accumulation of water is being conveyed to the ocean! On this last point I questioned several persons in the city, getting from all the same answer, that several attempts had been made to fathom this part of the river, but that none had been attended with success. [Sidenote: _The Cemeteries._] On my calling the attention of the stout, mediæval, coloured female who had charge of the baths of the St. Charles’s Hotel, to the water in the one she was preparing for me,—for it was of the colour, and not far from the consistency of pea-soup,—she convinced me in a moment of my ignorance, and of the irrational character of my remark. ‘Child,’ she said, ‘it is Mississippi river, which we all have to drink here all our lives.’