We have had stately, eroded hills, and broad, fertile bottoms, hemming us in all day, and marvelous ox-bows in the erratic stream. The hillsides are heavily wooded, sometimes the slopes coming straight down to the stony beach, without intervening terrace; where there are such terraces, they are narrow and rocky, and the homes of shanty-men; but upon the bottoms are whitewashed dwellings of frame or log, tenanted by a better class, who sometimes have goodly orchards and extensive corn-cribs. The villages are generally in the deep-cut notches of the hills, where the interior can be conveniently reached by a wagon-road--a country "rumpled like this," they say, for ten or twelve miles back, and then stretching off into level plains of fertility. Now and then, a deserted cabin on the terraces,--windowless and gaunt,--tells the story of some "cracker" family that malaria had killed off, or that has "pulled up stakes" and gone to seek a better land.
At Leavenworth, the river, which has been flowing northwest for thirty miles, takes a sudden sweep to the southwest, and thenceforward we have a rapid current. However, we need still to ply our blades, for there is a stiff head-wind, with an eager nip in it, to escape which we seek the lee as often as may be, and bask in the undisturbed sunlight. Right glad we were, at luncheon-time, to find a sheltered nook amidst a heap of boulders on the Kentucky shore, and to sit on the sun-warmed sand and drink hot tea by the side of a camp-fire, rejoicing in the kindness of Providence.
There are few houseboats, since leaving Louisville; to-day we have seen but three or four--one of them merrily going up stream, under full sail. Islands, too, are few--the Upper and Lower Blue River, a pretty pair, being the first we have met since Sunday. The water is falling, it now being three or four feet below the stage of a few days since, as can readily be seen from the broad dado of mud left on the leaves of willows and sycamores; while the drift, recently an ever-present feature of the current, is rapidly lodging in the branches of the willows and piling up against the sand-spits; and scrawling snags and bobbing sawyers are catching on the bars, and being held for the next "fresh."