Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/304

 *ing, May 30th, we continued our voyage with charming weather.

We passed several islands, and some very intricate channels, where we were obliged occasionally to work our oars with the utmost exertion, to avoid snags, sawyers, and improper sucks.

We this day spoke a large barge with some military officers on board from Fort Adams, bound to Marietta, with another following her, and having floated thirty-two miles, we passed the mouth of the river St. Francois on the right, but we could not see it on account of the overlapping of two willow points, which veil it from passengers on the Mississippi.

The river St. Francois rises near St. Louis in Upper Louisiana, and runs parallel to the Mississippi, between three and four hundred miles, between its source and its embouchure into that river.

The tongue of land between the two rivers, is only from six to twenty miles wide in that whole distance, is all flat, and great part of it liable to inundation in great floods. There is a chain of hills along the whole western bank of the St. Francois, and in this chain, are the lead mines of St. Genevieve, immediately behind that settlement, which supply all the states and territories washed by the Ohio and the Mississippi, and all their tributary streams, with that useful metal. The St. Francois rarely exceeds one hundred yards in breadth, its current is gentle, and its navigation unimpeded.

We landed at a fine well opened farm on the right, a mile below the mouth of St. Francois, where a handsome two story cabin with a piazza, seemed to promise plenty and comfort. This is the first settlement below the Chickasaw Bluffs, a computed distance of sixty-five miles. It is owned by one Philips from North Carolina, who has lived here six