The negro, wishing to restore the equilibrium, threw his weight on the opposite side; unluckily, this had been the simultaneous idea of his white companion, who also rolled over the fish to starboard. The canoe turned the turtle with them, and away went minnows, crawfish, lines, men, and all. Everybody laughed most outrageously, as the occupants of the canoe re-appeared upon the surface of the water, and made straight for the shore not daring to trust to another canoe after their ducking. The others continued fishing till about half-past nine, when the rays of the sun were becoming so powerful as to compel us to seek shelter in the tents.
If the scene on the lake had been exciting, it became not less so on shore, when all the negroes, male and female, crowding together, began to scale, strip, and salt the fish. Each of them had an account to give of some grand fishery, where a monstrous fish, a mile in length, had been taken by some fortunate “Sambo” of the South. The girls gaped with terror and astonishment, the men winking and trying to look grave, while spinning these yarns, which certainly beat all the wonders of the veracious Baron Munchausen.
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 tenor 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 steam-boats, 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 degrees to 40 degrees 35 minutes North latitude, and from 89 degrees 20 minutes to 95 degrees West longitude, 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 degrees North latitude, 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 a 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, etcetera, indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, etcetera, are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton tree, sycamore or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, etcetera, 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.