The rivers of Canada play no part in the history of the world of antiquity: how different from the destiny of the Ganges, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Danube, and the Rhine! What changes have not these beheld upon their banks! How much sweat and blood has been poured forth by conquerors to cross, in their current, waters over which, at their source, a goatherd passes with a single step! * Leaving the lakes of Canada, we came to Pittsburg at the confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio rivers; here the landscape unfolds an extraordinary stateliness. Nevertheless, this magnificent country is called Kentucky after its river, whose name means "river of blood." It owes this name to its beauty: for more than two centuries the nations on the side of the Cherokees and of the Iroquois nations fought for the possession of its hunting-fields. Will the European generations be more virtuous and more free upon those banks than were the exterminated American generations? Shall slaves not till the soil beneath the lash of their masters, in these deserts of man's primeval independence? Shall prisons and gallows not fill the places of the open hut and the tall tulip-tree where the bird builds its nest? Shall the richness of the soil not cause new wars to burst forth? Shall Kentucky cease to be the "Land of Blood," and shall the monuments of the arts beautify the banks of the Ohio to better purpose than the monuments of nature? After passing the Wabash, the Cypress, the Cumberland, the Cherokee, or Tennessee, the Yellowbank, one comes to a tongue of land often submerged beneath the mighty waters: here is formed the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi in latitude 36° 51'. The two rivers oppose an equal resistance to one another and relax the force of their currents; for some miles they sleep side by side without mingling in the same bed, like two great peoples at first of different origins and then combining to form but one race; like two illustrious combatants sharing the same couch after a battle; like a husband and wife born of hostile blood, who at first have but little inclination to mingle their destinies in the nuptial bed. And I, too, even as the mighty urns of the rivers, have poured forth my life's small current, now on this, now on that side of the mountain; capricious in my straying, but never malignant; preferring the poor glens to the rich plains, stopping at the flowers rather than at the palaces. For that matter, I was so charmed with my rambles that I gave scarce a further thought to the Pole. A party of traders, who had come from among the Creeks, in Florida, gave me leave to accompany them.