Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-11-13
The London Times,s Correspondents Onthe
Father of Waters. a.
The London Tfmes's correspo1
as follows of the Mississippi:

90 20
The London TGmes's correspondent writes
as follows of the Mississippi:
The side on which we halted was gray,
rough and desolate, with Shiny, muddy
banks, falling into riffs and ehasms and up-
seenly gaps, where rain and forest DRAWINGS
had oozed down for years, Here and there,
scattered upon the slippy soil, were miserable
wooden cabins, damp, comfortless, and dila-
pideted, with their windows thinly mended
with stained sheets of paper, or clumps of
dirty rags, with poor and sallow occupants,
all women, busily engaged inside, while
rough, stalwart sunburned men, with
.bronked muscular throats, laid bare, with
frouzy, dark moustache and grimy boards OF
a weeks growth, lounged about outside, or
sat on logs and spat around with lethargic
dulness. Tangled, unsghtly weeds abounded
amid the stumps of forest kings, long dedd
and gone, and thin, irregular growth of
dwaffsh cottonwood completed the aspect
which this bank wore of nature, misused
and falling to decay Below level, greasy
looking shore spread out, half mud, half
sand, with ponderous white skeletons of
trees, earcasses which the stream had torn
away from distant banks to leave them
stranded here, half buried in the slime,
with their gaunt bones striking up in ragged
points and splinters, all draped with sticky,
lank, offensive weeds, the garbage and Off
scourings of mighty river.
Carrion crows were busy here, and men
as muddy as the banks themselves were
cropping listlessly about, preparing stacks of
| roughshewn logs of timber for the steamers
| which ply up and downiand move this slug.
gish water into muddy foam. The stream
| itself was not very wide (about as wide as
| the Thames above Putney Bridget, and on,
| the opposite bank much like the Middlesex
shore Of our own stream at the same place.
| 1t was rich without being picturesque, rank
| an d overgrown with heavy timber and a
thick underwood Of weeds, giving of. a faint
and not unpleasant odor as of faded flowers,
| which spoke Of fever in every breath of the
thick, warm air. Above, the stream con-
tinued its. straight course, hemmed in with
theIsame wild, dank ruins of vegetation, and
covered from point to. point with smooth,
| round, scrubby, sickly little trees upon their
| edges, all worn and faded in their foliage,
less, as it tseemed, with coming winter than
their own inherent slow decay. Below, the
banks spread out in greater width, dotted
here and there between with swampy ats
and spits Of land, with sandbanks rising
everywhere, forcing the muddy water aside
in devious channels, some so shallow az
scarcely enough to ripple over the oozy
margin, some deep, where the yellow current
flowed swiftly and curled back with kind
of stagnant velocity from sharp, black-look-
ing stumps and snags-the real monsters Of
the deep of this great river, which, dark and
silent, seem always waiting for their prey
that surely comes at last. 'Dt'
4 On every side, seen in the cold, gray morn
ing, there was dim forlornness in the stream,
a lonely, fast-decaying savageness of nature
= a faded, ragged, wild, unwholesome aspect
!, which was almost mournful, which spoke o
the sickness and long toll spent to bring ever
, the NATURALIZATION around into the cente
, of this halftamed wilderness. Wan slug
| in tho tranq fil1pd tbn xva rrn a in
and seemed to rest upon the crazy, woodel
} houses, to spread abroad over the slim,
I shores, and dwell upon the soft, Hat banks 0
sand. The very river, in its yellow, dul
| ripple, and smooth, deep current, seemed t
speak of it, as, crouched beneath its narroy
banks, it erept lazily along, shorn of its en-
} ergy and might, a mere river that had Out
= lived the character of force and bulk {
3 which had heard so much; for this was th
9 Mississippi. This was that great father {
7 waters that drains quarter of the worlC
9 creeping slowly along between banks aworl
! too wide-a dull, dilapidated, poor, hal
/ shrunken, muddy stream.
= A few lean cows were wandering near il
a brink, as if they contemplated suicide; thel
s was dead horse in the foreground that ha
t perhaps already committed it. More catt
J. struggling and splashing in and out of Il
: riffs and weedy hollows of the banks, wit
here and there in the green distance pate
y of Indian corn, that beyond such traces o
!, was Wild was desolate, unhealthy, and abal
il doned. Such was the great Mississippi
l. Alton, such was the lonely aspect th
Ts mighty river bore when the Prince first sa
IS it. Such at all times is the Mississippi in
1: wild state, where hardy, poor, unknown
}, settlers first strive to battle with its raj
d vegetation, and, hand to hand, not only fig
ID the wilderness, but the deadly feVers whi
l. lurk around the banks at every turn, whi
al are borne in the warm thick air over Z
marshy land, and nestle close, like serpen
ID in little wales and hooks, that, clothed with
r. wild luxuriapce of prairie flowers, seem
OF charming TO the eye. =" "''+