may find one in a sink-hole and where the rank grasses, growing from heavy tufts, hold one's feet as a cord, is all that the strongest man can endure for even a short period. The little spots of ground which here and there rise above the flood are covered with driftwood and infested with snakes.
In midsummer the scene was more pleasant. "Beyond Ombra we enter a Tartarian meadow," wrote Volney in 1804, "interspersed with clumps of trees, but in general flat and naked, and windy and cold in winter. In summer it is filled with tall and strong shrubs, which brush the legs of the rider in his narrow path so much, that a journey out [to Kaskaskia] and back will wear out a pair of boots. Water is scarce [for drinking], and there is danger of being bewildered, as happened to one of my fellow travellers, three years before, when, with two others, he roamed about for seventeen days. Thunder, rain, gnats, and horse flies, are very troublesome in summer."[1]
Of the journey from Vincennes to Kas-
