n mines, or rather mountains of
iron, in the Missouri.

After you proceed south of Prairie du Chien, the features of the
Mississippi river gradually change; the bluffs decrease in number and in
height, until you descend to Rock Island, below which point they are
rarely to be met with. The country on each side now is chiefly composed
of variegated rolling prairies, with a less proportion of timber. To
describe these prairies would be difficult; that is, to describe the
effect of them upon a stranger: I have found myself lost, as it were;
and indeed sometimes, although on horseback, have lost myself, having
only the sun for my guide. Look round in every quarter of the compass,
and there you are as if on the ocean--not a landmark, not a vestige of
any thing human but yourself. Instead of sky and water, it is one vast
field, bounded only by the horizon, its surface gently undulating like
the waves of the ocean; and as the wind (which always blows fresh on the
prairies) bows down the heads of the high grass, it gives you the idea
of a running swell. Every three or four weeks there is a succession of
beautiful flowers, giving a variety of tints to the whole map, which die
away and are succeeded by others equally beautiful; and in the spring,
the strawberries are in such profusion, that you have but to sit down
wherever you may happen to be, and eat as long as you please.

We stopped at Alton, in the State of Missouri, to put on shore three
thousand pigs of lead. This town has been rendered notorious by the
murder--for murder it was, although it was brought on by his own
intemperate conduct--of Mr Lovejoy, who is now raised to the dignity of
a martyr by the abolitionists. Alton is a well-built town, of stone,
and, from its locality, must increase; it is, however, spoilt by the
erection of a penitentiary with huge walls, on a most central and
commanding situation. I read a sign put out by a small eating-house,
and which was very characteristic of the country--

"Stranger, here's your chicken fixings."

Four miles below Alton, the Missouri joins its waters with the
Mississippi; and the change which takes place at the mingling of the two
streams is very remarkable--the clear pellucid current of the upper
Mississippi being completely extinguished by the foul mud of the other
turbid and impetuous river. It was a great mistake of the first
explorers, when they called the western branch, at the meeting of the
two rivers,