aunt,
bell-ringing cows are wandering, eating the leaves of fallen trees,
for lack of better pasturage. Our pilot map, of sixty years ago,
records the presence of Wilkinsonville (942 miles), on the site of
old Fort Wilkinson of the War of 1812-15, but no one along the banks
appears to have ever heard of it; however, after much searching, we
found the place for ourselves, on an eminence of fifty feet, with
two or three farm-houses as the sole relics of the old establishment.
Caledonia (Olmstead P.O.), nine miles down, consists of several large
buildings on a hill set well back from the river. Mound City (959
miles),--the "America" of our time-worn map,--in whose outskirts we
are camped to-night, is a busy town with furniture factories, lumber
mills, ship-yards, and a railway transfer. Below that, stretches the
vast extent of swamp and low woodland on which Cairo (967 miles) has
with infinite pains been built--like "brave little Holland," holding
her own against the floods solely by virtue of her encircling dike.

Houseboats have been few, to-day, and they of the shanty order and
generally stranded high upon the beach. One sees now and then, on the
Illinois ridge, the cheap log or frame house of a "cracker," the very
picture of desolate despair; but on the Kentucky shore are few signs
of life, for the bottom lies so low that it is frequently inundated,
and settlement ventures no nearer than two or three miles from the
riverside. A fisherman comes occasionally into view, upon this wide
expanse of wood and water and clay-banks; sometimes we hail him in
passing, always getting a respectful answer, but a stare of innocent
curiosity.

Our last home upon the Ohio is facing the Kentucky shore, on the
cleanly sand-beach of Mound City Towhead, a small island which in
times of high water is but a bar. The tent is screened in a willow
clump; just below us, on higher ground, sycamores soar heavenward,
gayly festooned with vines, hiding from us Mound City and the Illinois
mainland. Across the river, a Kentucky negro is singing in the
gloaming; but it is over a mile away, and, while the tune is plain,
the words are lost. Children's voices, and the bay of hounds, come
wafted to us from the northern shore. A steamer's wake rolls along
our island strand, dangerously near the camp-fire; the river is still
falling, however, and we no longer fear the encroachments of the
flood. The Doctor and I found a secluded nook, where in the moonlight