Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/356

Rh and the next morning were in the waters of the Missouri, which rush into those of the Mississippi, about eighteen miles north of St. Louis, with such vehemence, and with such a volume of water, that it altogether changes the character of the Mississippi. There is an end now to its calmness and its bright tint. It now flows onward restless and turbid, and stocks and trees, and every kind of lumber which can float, are whirled along upon its waves, all carried hither by the Missouri, which, during its impetuous career of more than three thousand miles through the wilderness of the west, bears along with it everything which it finds on its way. Missouri is a sort of Xantippe, but Mississippi is no Socrates, because he evidently allows himself to be disturbed by the influence of his ill-tempered spouse.

Opposite St. Louis boys were rowing about in little boats, endeavouring to fish up planks and branches of trees which were floating on the river.

The first view of St. Louis was very peculiar. The city looks as if it were besieged from the side of the river by a number of immense Mississippi beasts, resembling a sort of colossal white sea-bears. And so they were; they were those large three-decked, white-painted steamers, which lined the shore, lying closely side by side to the number of above a hundred; their streamers, with names from all the countries on the face of the earth, fluttering in the wind above their chimneys, which seemed to me like immense nostrils; for every steam-boat on the Mississippi has two such apparatus, which send forth huge volumes of smoke under the influence of “high pressure.”

When we reached St. Louis it was as warm as the middle of summer, and many of the trees in the streets yet bore verdant foliage. I recognise the tree of the south, the “pride of India,” which bears clusters of flowers like lilacs during the time of flowering, and