ly wooded, sometimes the slopes coming straight
down to the stony beach, without intervening terrace; where there are
such terraces, they are narrow and rocky, and the homes of shanty-men;
but upon the bottoms are whitewashed dwellings of frame or log,
tenanted by a better class, who sometimes have goodly orchards and
extensive corn-cribs. The villages are generally in the deep-cut
notches of the hills, where the interior can be conveniently reached
by a wagon-road--a country "rumpled like this," they say, for ten
or twelve miles back, and then stretching off into level plains of
fertility. Now and then, a deserted cabin on the terraces,--windowless
and gaunt,--tells the story of some "cracker" family that malaria had
killed off, or that has "pulled up stakes" and gone to seek a better
land.

At Leavenworth, the river, which has been flowing northwest for thirty
miles, takes a sudden sweep to the southwest, and thenceforward we
have a rapid current. However, we need still to ply our blades, for
there is a stiff head-wind, with an eager nip in it, to escape which
we seek the lee as often as may be, and bask in the undisturbed
sunlight. Right glad we were, at luncheon-time, to find a sheltered
nook amidst a heap of boulders on the Kentucky shore, and to sit on
the sun-warmed sand and drink hot tea by the side of a camp-fire,
rejoicing in the kindness of Providence.

There are few houseboats, since leaving Louisville; to-day we have
seen but three or four--one of them merrily going up stream, under
full sail. Islands, too, are few--the Upper and Lower Blue River, a
pretty pair, being the first we have met since Sunday. The water is
falling, it now being three or four feet below the stage of a few days
since, as can readily be seen from the broad dado of mud left on
the leaves of willows and sycamores; while the drift, recently
an ever-present feature of the current, is rapidly lodging in the
branches of the willows and piling up against the sand-spits; and
scrawling snags and bobbing sawyers are catching on the bars, and
being held for the next "fresh."

There is little life along shore, in these lower waters. There are two
lines of ever-widening, willowed beach of rock and sand or mud; above
them, perpendicular walls of clay, which edge either rocky terraces
backed by grand sweeps of convoluted hills,--sometimes wooded to the
top, and sometimes eroded into palisades,--or wide-stretching bottoms
given over to small far