Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/296

 the water's edge, the two being connected by a semicircular range of smaller ones receding from the bank, having a small willow bottom in front of them.

The river retaining its southerly course, floated us in another half league, past the beginning of island No. 34 of Cramer's Navigator, which is four miles and a half long, at the end of which, another large island (not mentioned in the Navigator, but probably included in No. 34, from which only a narrow channel separates it) begins. Two miles from hence a handsome little creek or river, about forty yards wide, joins the Mississippi from the N. E. and nearly a mile lower is another small creek from the eastward with willows at its mouth.

The second Chickasaw Bluff, which we had seen in a long reach down the river ever since we passed Flour island, commences at a mile below the last creek, on the left hand. The cliff, of a yellowish brown colour, has fallen in from the top of the bluff, which is about one hundred and fifty feet high, and immediately after is a cleft or deep fissure, through {263} which, a small creek or run enters the river. Half a mile lower down, the foundation of the cliff, formed apparently of potter's blue clay, assumes the appearance of the buttresses of an ancient fortification, projecting to support the huge impending yellowish red cliff above, the base of the whole next the water being a heap of ruins in fantastick and various forms, perpetually tumbling from the cliff, which is beautifully streaked with horizontal lines, separating the different strata of sand and clay of which it is composed.

The second bluffs are about two miles long, and form the interior of a great bend of the river, which curves from S. W. by S. to N. W. where being narrowed to a quarter of a mile wide between the bluff and the island, (on which the passengers had bestowed the name of Cuming's island)