with great force: I calculated at six miles an hour. The island is clothed with fine trees, and the opposite banks are level and capable of high cultivation. But since I left the village of Henderson, I have not seen twenty settlements, and I understand, the last three hundred miles has been little more than an uninterrupted wilderness. The river also is more dangerous than above. It abounds in sand-bars, and is subject to violent and tempestuous winds.

On leaving the island, I was struck by an hurricane, which came so unexpectedly that I had not time to pull in shore. It rushed up the river and raised a sea in which all our art was required to preserve us from foundering. When the boat was first struck; she backed against the body of the current, and remained a few moments in the situation of a ship that had missed her stays. The water began to bear her down. I clapt the

helm about, and succeeded in putting

her head up

with as much

her descend.

stream, whither she went velocity as I ever knew My situation was still perilous, and was rendered more so by the storm which suddenly chopped round and made it necessary for me again to put about in a dangerous channel, and amidst contending waves. This done, I made an effort to gain the windward shore which I soon found a very rash attempt. The hurricane tore the trees up by the roots, or laid them prostrate with dreadful force in the water; the smallest touch of one of which would have sent my boat to the bottom. Hearing the tremendous noise of the falling woods, I had to keep the open river, bale out the water I had taken in, and keep steady in the suck of the current. When the storm abated and the river fell, you can hardly conceive the elating effect it had -on me. I profited by a gentle breeze,

into which the tempest subsided and ran without intermission for sixteen hours. That time brought me to the mouth of Cumberland river, into which I put to repair my damages.

Cumberland, or Shawanee river intersects the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina, sixty miles from the Mississippi, and again one hundred and ninety-eight miles from the same river, a little above the entrance of Obey's river into Cumberland. Its clear fork crosses the same boundary about three hundred miles from the Mississippi. Cumberland is a very gentle stream, navigable for loaded bateaux for eight hundred miles without interruption; then intervene some rapids of fifteen miles in length, after which it is again navigable for seventy miles upwards, which is within two miles of the great Cumberland mountains. It is about one hundred and twenty yards wide through its

whole course.

This river waters the

country called Tenassee, lying to the south of Kentucky, and has on its banks the principal towns of that State.

The Tenasee State bears a very high character. It is bounded north by Kentucky and part of Virginia; east by North Carolina; south by South Carolina and Georgia; and west by the Mississippi. The climate is very temperate, and said not to be unhealthy. It is watered by seven navigable rivers; the Cumberland and Tenassee which empty into the Ohio; and the Wolf, Hatchie, Deer, Obion and Reelfoot, which empty into the Mississippi. The Cumberland, or great laurel ridge of mountains, is the most stupendous pile in the United States. It abounds with ginseng and physical plants, and contains sloan coal in a vast abundance.

A few years since Tenassee abounded with herds of wild cattle and buffalos.

Elk are still seen in some places, chiefly among the mountains. The deer are become comparatively scarce. Bears and wolves yet remain, beavers and otters are caught on the upper branches of all the rivers.

The mammoth, that stupendous animal, formerly inhabited the Tenassee: his remains are often found.

Very valuable articles are exported from the State. Fine waggon and saddle horses, beef, cattle, ginseng, deerskins and furs, cotton, hemp and flax; also iron, timber, pork and flour.

The State Government have very judiciously erected public schools and places of worship in the principal towns, and from all accounts the country is likely to prosper and flourish.

There are still two Indian tribes within and in the vicinity of the State: they are the Cherokees and Chickasaws. The Cherokees have been a warlike and nu