aspect, and a cold soil and a cold clime drove man to launch his bark upon the ocean, to dare wind and wave, and to seek from the deep the fisheries, and from freights the treasures his own home will not give him.
Indeed such a journey as this, in one's own country, to an inquisitive mind, is worth all " the tours of Europe." He who wishes to feel the full importance of an American congress must make such a journey. Let him take an excursion on the Sacramento which drains the far-famed and new Eldorado of the West. Let him stand upon the levee at New Orleans and count the numbers and the tiers of American vessels that lie there, four, five and six thick along its embankment. Let him hear the puff, puff, puff of the high pressure steamboats that come sweeping in almost every hour, perhaps from a port 2,000 miles off, from the then frozen winter of the north, to the full burning summer of the south - all inland navigation - fleets of there, as large as the world can show; with their elegant rooms, neat berths, spacious saloons and costly pianos, it may be, so that travelers can make their way to Louisville (Kentucky), as if they were on a party of pleasure. Let him survey all these, as they come in with products from the Red river, 1,2oo miles in one direction, or from Pittsburg (Pennsylvania), 2,000 miles in another direction; from the western tributaries of the vast Mississippi, the thickets of the Arkansas or White river, from the muddy, far-reaching Missouri and its hundreds of branches. * * * Let him see the adventurous flatboats of western waters on which, frail bark! the daring backwoodsman sallies forth from the Wabash, or rivers hundreds of miles above, on a voyage of Atlantic distance, with hogs, horses, oxen and cattle of all kinds on board, corn, flour, wheat-all the products of rich western lands. *
Take the traveler where the clear, silvery waters of the Ohio become tinged with the mud from the Missouri, and where the currents of the mighty rivers run apart for miles, as if indignant at the strange embrace. Ascend with him 9o