ly profit to
passing steamers, which will always stop when flagged.

Approaching Cave-in-Rock, Ill. (869 miles), the right bank is
for several miles an almost continuous palisade of lime-stone,
thick-studded with black and brown flints. In the breaking down of
this escarpment, popularly styled Battery Rocks, numerous caves have
been formed, the largest of which gave the place its name. It is a
rather low opening into the rock, perhaps two hundred feet deep, and
the floor some twenty feet above the present level of the river;
in times of flood, it is frequently so filled with water that boats
enter, and thousands of silly people have, in two or three generations
past, carved or painted their names upon the vaulted roof.[B] From
this large entrance hall, a chimney-like hole in the roof leads to
other chambers, said to be imposing and widely ramified--"not unlike
a Gothic cathedral," said Ashe, an early English traveler (1806),
who appears to have everywhere in these Western wilds sought the
marvellous, and found it. About 1801, a band of robbers made these
inner recesses their home, and frequently sallied thence to rob
passing boats, and incidentally to murder the crews. As for the little
hamlet of Cave-in-Rock, nestled in a break in the palisade, a few
hundred yards below, it was, between 1801 and 1805, the seat of
another species of brigandage--a land speculation, wherein schemers
waxed rich from the confusion engendered by conflicting claims of
settlers, the outgrowth of carelessly-phrased Indian treaties
and overlapping French and English patents. From 1804 to 1810, a
Congressional committee was engaged in straightening out this weary
tangle; and its decisions, ratified by Congress, are to-day the
foundation of many land-titles in Indiana and Illinois.

We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois shore, opposite Half-Moon
Bar (872 miles), and a mile above Hurricane Island. Towering above us
are great sycamores, cypress, maples, and elms, and all about a dense
jungle of grasses, vines, and monster weeds--the rank horse-weed being
now some ten feet high, with a stem an inch in diameter; the dead
stalks of last year's growth, in the broad rolling fields to our rear,
indicate a possibility of sixteen feet, and an apparent desire to
out-rival the corn. Cane-brake, too, is prevalent hereabout, with
stalks two inches or more thick. The mulberries are reddening,
the Doctor reports on his return with the Boy from a botanizing