Six miles further brought us to the town of St. Louis,
over an elevated brushy plain, in which the soil assumed a decidedly
fertile aspect. We arrived about four o'clock in the afternoon, and had
a pleasant evening to view its fine site, based as it is on solid
limestone rock, where no encroachment of the headlong Mississippi can
ever endanger its safety. I was delighted with the site, and its
capacity for expansion, and cannot conceive of one in America, situated
in the interior, which appears destined to rival it in population,
wealth, power, and resources. It is idle to talk of any city of Europe
or Asia, situated as this is, twelve hundred miles from the sea, which
can be named as its future equal.
It was now the 27th of July, and the river, which had been swollen by
the Missouri flood, was rapidly falling, and almost diminished to its
summer minimum. It left a heavy deposit of mud on its immediate shores,
which, as it dried in the sun, cracked into fragments, which were often
a foot thick.
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