around it, and commanding a grand view over the river. If I were to live on the Mississippi, I would live here. It is a hilly region, and on all hands extend beautiful and varying landscapes; and all abounds with such youthful and fresh life.

The city is thronged with Indians. The men, for the most part, go about grandly ornamented, and with naked hatchets, the shafts of which serve them as pipes. They paint themselves so utterly without any taste that it is incredible. Sometimes one half of the countenance will be painted of a cinnamon-red, striped and in blotches, and the other half with yellow ditto, as well as all other sorts of fancies, in green, and blue, and black, without the slightest regard to beauty that I can discover. Here comes an Indian who has painted a great red spot in the middle of his nose; here another who has painted the whole of his forehead in small lines of yellow and black; there a third with coal-black rings round his eyes. All have eagles' or cocks' feathers in their hair, for the most part colored, or with scarlet tassels of worsted at the ends. The hair is cut short on the forehead, and for the rest hangs in elf-locks or in plaits on the shoulders, both of men and women. The women are less painted, and with better taste than the men, generally with merely one deep red little spot in the middle of the cheeks, and the parting of the hair on the forehead is died purple. I like their appearance better than that of the men. They have a kind smile, and often a very kind expression; as well as a something in the glance which is much more human; but they are evidently merely their husbands' beasts of burden. There goes an Indian with his proud step, bearing aloft his plumed head. He carries only his pipe, and when he is on a journey, perhaps a long staff in his hand. After him, with bowed head and stooping shoulders, follows his wife, bending under the burden which she bears on her back, and which a band, passing over the forehead,

enables her to support. Above the burden peeps forth a little round-faced child, with beautiful dark eyes: it is her " papoose," as these children are called. Its little body is fastened by swaddling-clothes upon its back on a board, which is to keep its body straight; and it lives, and is fed, and sleeps, and grows, always fastened to the board. When the child can walk it is still carried for a long time on the mother's back in the folds of her blanket. Nearly all the Indians which I have seen are of the Sioux tribe.

Governor Ramsay drove me yesterday to the Falls of St. Anthony. They are some miles from St. Paul's. These falls close the Mississippi to steam-boats and other vessels. From these falls to New Orleans the distance is two thousand two hundred miles. A little above the falls the river is again navigable for two hundred miles, but merely for small vessels, and that not without danger.

The Falls of St. Anthony have no considerable height, and strike me merely as the cascade of a great mill-dam. They fall abruptly over a stratum of a tufa rock, which they sometimes break and wash down in great masses. The country around is neither grand, nor particularly picturesque; yet the river here is very broad, and probably from that cause the fall and the hills appear more inconsiderable. The shore is bordered by a rich luxuriance of trees and shrubs, springing up wildly from among pieces of rock, and the craggy tufa walls with their ruinlike forms, which, however, have nothing grand about them. River, falls, country, views, every thing here has more breadth than grandeur.

It was Father Hennepin, the French Jesuit, who first came to these falls, brought hither captive by the Indians. The Indians called the falls "Irrara," or the Laughing Water; he christened them St. Anthony's. I prefer the first name, as being characteristic of the fall, which has rather a cheerful than a dangerous appearance, and the

roar of which has nothing terrific in it. The Mississippi is a river of a joyful temperament. I have a painting of its springs a present from Mr. Schoolcraft-the little lake, Itaska, in the northern part of Minnesota. The little lake looks like a serene heavenly mirror set in a frame of primeval forest. Northern firs and pines, maples and elms, and other beautiful American trees, surround the waters of this lake like a leafy tabernacle above the cradle of the infant river. Afar up in the distant background lies that elevated range of country, called by the French "Hauteur des terres," resembling a lofty plateau, covered with dense forest, scattered over with blocks of granite, and interspersed with a hundred springs: five of these throw themselves from different heights into the little lake.

When the infant Mississippi springs forth from the bosom of Itaska, it is a rapid and clear little stream, sixteen feet broad, and four inches deep. Leaping forward over stocks and stones, it expands itself ninety miles below its spring into Lake Pemideji-a lake the waters of which are clear as crystal, and which is free from islands. Here it is met by the River La Place, from Assawa Lake. Forty-five miles lower down it pours itself down into Lake Cass, the terminal point of Governor Cass's expedition in 1820. When the Mississippi emerges from this lake, it is one hundred and seventy-two feet broad, and eight feet deep. Thus continues it increasing in width and depth, receiving richer and richer tribute from springs and rivers, now reposing in clear lakes, abounding in innumerable species of fish, then speeding onward, between banks covered with wild roses, elders, hawthorns, wild rice, wild plums, and all kind of wood fruit, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, through forests of white cedar, pine, birch, and sugar - maple, abounding in game of many kinds, such as bears, elks, foxes, raccoons, martens, beavers, and such like; through the prairie country, the higher and lower full of bubbling fountains-the so-called Un

dine region; through tracts of country, the fertile soil of which would produce luxuriant harvests of corn, of wheat, potatoes, etc., through an extent of three or four hundred miles, during which it is navigable for a considerable distance, till it reaches St. Anthony. Just above this point, however, it has greatly extended itself, has embraced many greater and smaller islands, overgrown with trees and wild vines. Immediately above the falls, it runs so shallow over a vast level surface of rock that people may cross it in carriages, as we did to my astonishment. At no great distance below the falls the river becomes again navigable, and steamers go up as far as Mendota, a village at the outlet of the St. Peter's River into the Mississippi, somewhat above St. Paul's. From St. Paul's there is a free course down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Falls of St. Anthony are the last youthful adventure of the Mississippi. For nine hundred miles the river flows along the territory of Minnesota, a great part of which is wild and almost unknown country.

But to return to the falls and to the day I spent there.

Immediately below the largest of the falls, and enveloped in its spray, as if by shapes of mist, lies a little island of picturesque, ruin-like masses of stone, crowned with rich wood-the most beautiful and the most striking feature of the whole scene. It is called the Cataract Island of the laughing water-fall. It is also called "Spirit Island," from an incident which occurred here some years since, and which I must relate to you, because it is characteristic of the life of the Indian woman.

"Some years ago, a young hunter, of the Sioux tribe, set up his wigwam on the bank of the Mississippi, a little above St. Anthony's Fall. He had only one wife, which is an unusual thing with these gentlemen, who sometimes are possessed of as many as twenty; and she was called Ampato Sapa. They lived happily together for many years,

and had two children, who played around their fire, and whom they were glad to call their children.

"The husband was a successful hunter, and many families, by degrees, assembled around him, and erected their wigwams near his. Wishing to become still more closely connected with him, they represented to him that he ought to have several wives, as by that means he would become. of more importance, and might, before long, be elected chief of the tribe.

"He was well pleased with this counsel, and privately took a new wife; but, in order to bring her into his wigwam without displeasing his first wife, the mother of his children, he said to her,

"Thou knowest that I never can love any other woman so tenderly as I love thee; but I have seen that the labor of taking care of me and the children is too great for thee, and I have therefore determined to take another wife, who shall be thy servant; but thou shalt be the principal one in the dwelling.'

"The wife was very much distressed when she heard these words. She prayed him to reflect on their former affection-their happiness during many years-their children. She besought of him not to bring this second wife into their dwelling.

"In vain. The next evening the husband brought the new wife into his wigwam.

"In the early dawn of the following morning a deathsong was heard on the Mississippi. A young Indian woman sat in a little canoe with her two small children, and rowed it out into the river in the direction of the falls. It was Ampato Sapa. She sang in lamenting tones the sorrow of her heart, of her husband's infidelity, and her determination to die. Her friends heard the song, and saw her intention, but too late to prevent it.

"Her voice was soon silenced in the roar of the fall. The boat paused for a moment on the brink of the preci