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Show 114 RIVIERE AU BCEUF----GASCONADE RIVER----PORTLAND. I I said to be less salubrious. The inundations of the river form marshes on the low grounds, which, being protected from the sun by the surrounding trees, produce fevers. Flint, in his History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, gives a very good account of the climate and diseases of this country. We passed Isle and Riviere au Bceuf, as well as the village of Pinkney; observed very picturesque rocky scenes, climbing plants, which twined round overthrown broken trunks of trees, and gloomy ravines, which were now full of the bright green young leaves that were everywhere sprouting forth. The Yellow Stone had several times struck against submerged trunks of trees, but it was purposely built very strong, for such dangerous voyages. This was its third voyage up the Missouri. The Fur Company possess another steamer called the Assiniboin which had left St. Louis to go up the Missouri before us. At night-fall we lay to on the right bank, where a cheerful fire of large logs was soon made, round which our engages assembled and chatted incessantly in French. We spent part of the night with Messrs. Me Kenzie, Dougherty, and Sanford, under the canopy of the starry heavens, while a couple of clarionets, on board the vessel, played Scotch airs and the famous " Yankee-doodle." On the morning of the 13th of April, the weather was serene and cool, the thermometer, at eight in the morning, + 5° Reaum., and at noon, + 9°. We had lain to, for the night, near Otter Island, and soon saw before us the country about Gasconade River. There were extensive sand banks on the left hand, picturesque hills, many pleasing gradations of tint in the forests; an island, on the surface of which we distinctly saw the layer of black mould, six feet thick, with sand beneath it; further from the left bank a chain of hills, valleys, and eminences, covered with high trees, which were just beginning to put forth leaves, all illumined by the beams of the brightest morning sun. Near the Gasconade, where we took in wood, many interesting plants were in blossom. The Gasconade, which is an inconsiderable river, and rises not far from the source of the Merrimack, in the State of Missouri, expands behind a high, bold eminence, the summit of which is covered with rocks and red cedars. The hills near it are frequently covered with the white and the yellow pine, which supply St. Louis with boards and timber for building. Its mouth, which is reckoned to be 100 miles from that of the Missouri, is picturesquely situated in a lofty forest. Near it, our hunters fired unsuccessfully at a flock of wild turkeys. We soon passed the village of Portland; then the mouth of Little-Au-Vase Creek, where we observed, in the woods, the young leaves of the buck-eye trees {Pavia) which grew in great abundance. A little further on, the Osage River appears between wooded banks: it is a small stream, in which, according to Warden, many soft-shelled tortoises are found: we came then to Cote-Sans-Dessein, an old French settlement of six or eight houses, celebrated for the brave defence made by a few men against a numerous body of Indians. It must have been formerly much more considerable, since Brackenridge calls it a beautiful place. The river has destroyed it, and it is now quite insignificant. Opposite to it, on the left bank, further up the country, there |