nd bestowed upon ever! ttle rascal, who, know an cla no patron smuggled into the wor how: George Washi "indeed, if the perpetr a venerated name maj

dawn lighted me into nhappy Clarence, f

a miserable night!" entle sleep, had visited ne eyelids; though e perseverance of a m bed to board and ghout that livelong the morning dawned sand catydids keep ingly for no other reas rment; until, sinners myself assoilzed of h e life. Happy enoug the saddle, the mon

tinction appropriated to that celebrated long since as when it constituted the extr in this direction of the Northwestern T Extending northwardly from the embou the Kaskaskia to the confluence of the gre a distance of about one hundred miles, an cing three hundred thousand acres of lan tility unrivalled, it presents, perhaps, sec to the Delta of Egypt, the most remarka of country known. Its breadth varies fr miles to seven. Upon one side it is bo a heavy strip of forest a mile or two deep the Mississippi; and upon the other by a ed range of bluffs, now rising from the mural escarpment of several hundred feet village of Prairie du Rocher, and again, site St. Louis, swelling gracefully away in ed sand-heaps, surmounted by Indian gra the base of the latter are exhaustless bed minous coal, lying between parallel strat stone. The area between the timber-be bluffs is comprised in one extended mead ing in alternate waves like the ocean afte and interspersed with island-groves, slou ous, lagoons, and shallow lakes. Thes

sions of water are numerous, and owe th

to that geological feature invariable to the Western rivers the superior elevation of the immediate bank of the stream to that of the interior plain. The subsidence of the spring-floods is thus precluded; and, as the season advances, some of the ponds, which are more shallow, become entirely dry by evaporation, while others, converted into marshes, stagnate, and exhale malaria exceedingly deleterious to health. The poisonous night-dews caused by these marshes, and the miasm of their decomposing and putrefying vegetation, occasion, with the sultriness of the climate, bilious intermittents, and the far-famed, far-dreaded "fever and ague," not unfrequently terminating in consumption. This circumstance, indeed, presents the grand obstacle to the settlement of the American Bottom. It is one, however, not impracticable to obviate at slight expense, by the construction of sluices and canals communicating with the rivers, and by the clearing up and cultivation of the soil. The salubrious influence of the latter expedient upon the climate has, indeed, been satisfactorily tested during the ten or twelve years past; and this celebrated alluvion now bids fair, in time, to become the garden of North America. A few of its lakes are beautiful water-sheets, with pebbly shores and sparkling waves, abounding with fish. Among these is one appropriately named "Clear Lake," or the Grand Marais, as the French call it, which may be seen from St. Louis of a bright morning, when the sunbeams are playing upon its surface, or at night when the moon is at her full. The

earliest settlements of the Western Valley were planted upon the American Bottom, and the French villagers have continued to live on in health among the sloughs and marshes, where Americans would most assuredly have perished. Geologically analyzed, the soil consists of a silicious or argillaceous loam, as sand or clay forms the predominating constituent. Its fertility seems exhaustless, having continued to produce corn at an average of seventyfive bushels to the acre for more than a hundred years in succession, in the neighbourhood of the old French villages, and without deterioration. Maize seems the appropriate production for the soil; all of the smaller grains, on account of the rank luxuriance of their growth, being liable to blast before the harvesting.

Cahokia, Ill.

tween one pair of shoulders the v Alack, now! would you but discou ayont the antipodes !"

"Peace, ignoramus! 'tis too goo to. The world shall get it, caxtoniz eller and Simpleton.

"Farewell! a word that mus

A sound which makes us li d

Or the alluvial character o ican Bottom there can ex shells, fragments of coal, an been subjected to the abras are found at a depth of thirty and the soil throughout seem dity. Whether this alluvial sidered the result of annual f ages, or whether the entire the bed of a vast lake, in wh Mississippi and Missouri ming to the Gulf, is a question of s terest. The latter seems the ry. Indeed, the ancient exis lake, where now lies the Am the east side of the Mississipp Prairie upon the west side,

miles northwardly from the mouth of the Missouri where the Bottom ends, appears geologically demonstrable. The southern limit of this vast body of water seems to have been at that remarkable cliff, rising from the bed of the Mississippi about twenty miles below the outlet of the Kaskaskia, and known as the "Grand Tower." There is every indication from the torn and shattered aspect of the cliffs upon either side, and the accumulation of debris, that a grand parapet of limestone at this point once presented a barrier to the heaped-up waters, and formed a cataract scarcely less formidable than that of Niagara. The elevation of the river by this obstacle is estimated at one hundred and thirty feet above the present ordinary water-mark. For more than an hundred miles before reaching this point, the Mississippi now rolls through a broad, deep valley, bounded by an escarpment of cliffs upon either side; and, wherever these present a bold façade to the stream, they are grooved, as at the cornice-rocks, by a series of parallel lines, distinctly traced and strikingly uniform. As the river descends, these water-grooves gradually rise along the heights, until, at the Grand Tower, they attain an altitude of more than an hundred feet; below this point the phenomenon is not observed.* This circumstance, and the disruption of the cliffs at the same elevation, clearly indicate the former surface of the lake. Organic remains, petrifactions of madrepores, corallines, concholites, and other fossil testacea, are found imbedded in a stra* See Appendix.