OCR Text |
Show 1836- 1837] Flaggs Far West 181 to a cosmorama can be commanded. The city, retreating as it does from the river's brink - its buildings of every diversity of form, material, and structure, promiscuously heaped the one upon the other, and the whole intermingled with the fresh green of forest- trees, may boast of much scenic beauty. The range of white limestone warehouses, circling like a crescent the shore, form the most prominent feature of the foreground, while the forest of shrub- oaks sweeps away in the rear. For some time I gazed upon this imposing view, and then, slowly turning my horse's head, was upon the dusty thoroughfare to Edwardsville. For the first time I found myself upon the celebrated " American Bottom," a tract of country which, for fertility and depth of soil, is perhaps unsurpassed in the world. A fine road of baked loam extended along my route. Crossing Cahokia Creek, which cuts its deep bed diagonally through the bottom from the bluffs some six miles distant, and threading a grove of the beautiful pecan, with its long trailing boughs and [ 156] delicate leaves, my path was soon winding gracefully away among those venerable monuments of a race now passed from the earth. The eye is struck at first by the number of these eminences, as well as by their symmetry of form and regularity of outline; and the most familiar resemblance suggested is that of gigantic hay- ricks sprinkled over the uniform surface of the prairie on every side. As you advance, however, into the plain, leaving the range of mounds upon the left, something of arrangement is detected in their relative position; and a design too palpable is betrayed to mistake them for the handiwork of Nature. Upward of one hundred of these mounds, it is stated, may be enumerated within seven miles of St. Louis, their altitude varying from ten to sixty feet, with a circumference at the base of about as many yards. One of these, nearly in the centre of the first collection, is remarked as considerably |