Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/293

 loaded boats passing downward. The lives of a number of strangers have lately been lost, by venturing down without pilots. The whole fall, at the lowest known stage of water, is nearly twenty-four feet; but in floods the declivity is distributed over a large portion of the river, and is imperceptible to the eye. The rocks contain vast quantities of organic remains, as madrepores, millepores, favocites, alcyonites, corals, several species of terebratulæ, trilobites, trochites, &c. &c. These remains being harder than the water-worn rocks, appear prominent, as if in relief, and many of them almost entirely detached. They are so numerous, that the surface is literally studded with them. Volney, who visited this place, has represented the rocks to be destitute of such subjects. It must have been at a time when they were covered by water.

The inhabitants in the neighbourhood of the Falls have been visited by attacks of bilious fever and ague. A considerable number of persons have been carried off by the former of these complaints, and the convalescent of both are much debilitated. A surmise lately appeared in a Louisville newspaper, that many poor people had suffered from the want of medical assistance, and hazarded the opinion, that a number had died in cases where seasonable applications might have been efficacious. Accounts from Vincennes [141] say, that about a third part of the people there are confined to bed by sickness, and that much of the Wabash country, both in Indiana and Illinois, are now subject to the same evil. Reports from the settlements on the lower parts of White river represent that sickness prevails there and along other water courses. There are many {262} people who act as if they were not