The call to renew the sport broke off their ludicrous inventions. Our fortune was as great as in the forenoon, and at sunset we returned home, leaving the negroes to salt and pack the fish in barrels, for the supply of the plantation.
A few days afterwards, I bade adieu to Mr. Courtenay and his delightful family, and embarked myself and horse on board of one of the steamers bound to St. Louis, which place I reached on the following morning.
St. Louis has been described by so many travellers, that it is quite useless to mention anything about this "queen city of the Mississippi." I will only observe, that my arrival produced a great sensation among the inhabitants, to whom the traders in the Far West had often told stories about the wealth of the Shoshones. In two or three days, I received a hundred or more applications from various speculators, "to go and kill the Indians in the West, and take away their treasures;" and I should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more, had I not hit upon a good plan to rid myself of all their importunities. I merely sent all the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them; and it excited a hearty laugh amongst the traders, when thirty letters appeared in the columns, all of them written in the same tenour and style.
One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith himself, in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time, as the state of affairs having now assumed a certain degree of importance, it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a common understanding. Nothing could have pleased me more than this communication, and the next morning I started from St. Louis, arriving before noon at St. Charles, a small town upon the Missouri, inhabited almost entirely by French Creoles, fur-traders, and trappers. There, for the first time, I saw a steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steamboats, as, in that particular spot, the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity, forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may come into them.
From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land, till I arrived once more upon the Mississippi; but there "the father of the waters," (as the Indians call it) presented an aspect entirely new: its waters, not having yet mixed with those of the Missouri, were quite transparent; the banks, too, were several hundred feet high, and recalled to my mind the countries watered by the Buona Ventura River. For two days I continued my road almost always in sight of the stream, till at last, the ground becoming too broken and hilly, I embarked upon another steam ferry at Louisiana, a rising and promising village, and landed upon the shores of Illinois, where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling.
The state of Missouri, in point of dimensions, is the second state of the Union, being inferior in extent only to Virginia. It extends from 36° to 40° 35' N. lat, and from 89° 20' to 95° W. long., having an area of about 68,500 square miles. Its boundaries, as fixed by the Constitution, are a line drawn from a point in the middle of the Mississippi, in 36° N. lat., and along that parallel, west to its intersection, a meridian line passing through the mouth of the Kansas. Thence, the western boundary was originally at that meridian: but, by act of Congress in 1836, the triangular tract between it and the Missouri, above the mouth of the Kansas, was annexed to the state. On the north, the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the River Desmoines, forms the boundary between that river and the Missouri.
The surface of that portion of the state which lies north of the Missouri is, in general, moderately undulating, consisting of an agreeable interchange of gentle swells and broad valleys, and rarely, though occasionally, rugged, or rising into hills of much elevation. With the exception of narrow strips of woodland along the water-courses, almost the whole of this region is prairie, at least nine-tenths being wholly destitute of trees. The alluvial patches or river-bottoms are extensive, particularly on the Missouri, and generally of great fertility; and the soil of the upland is equal, if not superior, to that of any other upland tract in the United States. The region south of the Missouri River and west of the Osage, is of the same description; the northern and western Missouri country is most delightful, a soil of inexhaustible fertility, and a salubrious climate, rendering it a most desirable and pleasant residence; but south-east of the latter river, the state is traversed by numerous ridges of the Ozark mountains, and the surface is here highly broken and rugged.
This mountainous tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks, it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, &c., indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, &c., are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton-tree, sycamore, or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, &c., predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods, but these patches are isolated and inaccessible, except by boats, during the rise of the waters.
My friend, Mr. Courtenay, penetrated these swamps with three Indians and two negroes. His companions were bogged and lost; he returned, having killed seven fine elks, and two buffaloes. Some of these mighty animals have been breeding there for a long while, undisturbed by man.
The state of Missouri is abundantly supplied with navigable channels, affording easy access to all parts. The Mississippi washes the eastern border, by the windings of the stream, for a distance of about four hundred and seventy miles. Above St. Genevieve, it flows for the most part between high and abrupt cliffs of limestone, rising to an elevation of from one hundred to four hundred feet above the surface of the river; sometimes separated from it by bottoms of greater or less width, and at others springing up abruptly from the water's edge. A few miles below Cape Girardeau, and about thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Ohio, are the rocky ledges, called the Little and Grand Chain; and about half-way between that point and St. Genevieve, is the Grand Tower, one of the wonders of the Mississippi. It is a stupendous pile of rocks, of a conical form, about one hundred and fifty feet high, and one hundred feet in circumference at its base, rising up out of the bed of the river. It seems, in connection with the rocky shores on both sides, to have been opposed, at some former period, as a barrier to the flow of the Mississippi, which must here have had a perpendicular fall of more than one hundred feet.