"We shall endeavor to instruct the unexperienced navigator how to avoid them. The instability of the banks proceeds from their being composed of a loose sandy soil, and the impetuosity of the current against their prominent parts, which, by undermining them unceasingly, causes them to tumble into the river, taking with them everything that may be above. And if when the event happens boats should be moored there, they must necessarily be buried in the common ruin, which unfortunately has been sometimes the case. For which reason, navigators have made it an invariable rule never to land at or near a point, but always in the sinuosity or cove below it, which is generally lined with small willows of the weeping kind, whence some call them although improperly, willow points, and which being generally clear of logs and planters, the landing is easily effected, by running directly into them, the resistance of the willows destroying a part of the boat's velosity, and the rest is overcome without much exertion by holding fast to the limbs which surround you.--In those places the river generally deposits the surplus of soil, with which it is charged from the continual cavings of the points, and so forms new land on one side by destroying some on the other. "The banks of this river from where it receives the Missouri to its mouth, being with a few exceptions below high water mark, an immense country is inundated, when the river is in its highest state, by which those extensive swamps are formed and supplied, which prove the nurseries of myriades of musquitoes and other insects (to the no small inconvenience of the traveller) and the never failing source of grievous diseases to the inhabitants. There are also streams, which at all times sally forth from the main river with astonishing rapidity, and whose vortex extends some distance into the stream. Boats once sucked into such bayous are next to lost, it being almost impossible to force so unwieldy a machine as a flat bottomed boat against so powerful a current. It will therefore be safest for boats, never to keep too close to shore, but to keep some distance out in the river. To avoid planters and sawyers requires nothing more but attention, for they always occasion a small breaker whereever they are, and if your boat seems to be hurried towards them row the boat from them, else if you are dilatory you must abide by the consequence.