Bad Weather, Very Heavy Rains, And An Unusually Early Rise In The
Missouri, Rendered The Ascent Of The River Toilsome, Slow, And
Dangerous.
The rise of the Missouri does not generally take place
until the month of May or June:
The present swelling of the river
must have been caused by a freshet in some of its more southern
branches. It could not have been the great annual flood, as the
higher branches must still have been ice-bound.
And here we cannot but pause, to notice the admirable arrangement
of nature, by which the annual swellings of the various great
rivers which empty themselves into the Mississippi, have been
made to precede each other at considerable intervals. Thus, the
flood of the Red River precedes that of the Arkansas by a month.
The Arkansas, also, rising in a much more southern latitude than
the Missouri, takes the lead of it in its annual excess, and its
superabundant waters are disgorged and disposed of long before
the breaking up of the icy barriers of the north; otherwise, did
all these mighty streams rise simultaneously, and discharge their
vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would be the
consequence, that would submerge and devastate all the lower
country.
On the afternoon of the third day, January, 17th, the boats
touched at Charette, one of the old villages founded by the
original French colonists. Here they met with Daniel Boone, the
renowned patriarch of Kentucky, who had kept in the advance of
civilization, and on the borders of the wilderness, still leading
a hunter's life, though now in his eighty-fifth year.
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