recalled, literally, Swift's mock heroic,

"Nature must give way to art;"

yet, she was looking so mighty, and so unsubdued all the time,
that I could not help fancying she would some day take the matter
into her own hands again, and if so, farewell to New Orleans.

It is easy to imagine the total want of beauty in such a
landscape; but yet the form and hue of the trees and plants, so
new to us, added to the long privation we had endured of all
sights and sounds of land, made even these swampy shores seem
beautiful. We were, however, impatient to touch as well as see
the land; but the navigation from the Balize to New Orleans is
difficult and tedious, and the two days that it occupied appeared
longer than any we had passed on board.

In truth, to those who have pleasure in contemplating the
phenomena of nature, a sea voyage may endure many weeks without
wearying. Perhaps some may think that the first glance of ocean
and of sky shew all they have to offer; nay, even that that first
glance may suggest more of dreariness than sublimity; but to me,
their variety appeared endless, and their beauty unfailing. The
attempt to describe scenery, even where the objects are prominent
and tangible, is very rarely successful; but where the effect is
so subtile and so varying, it must be vain. The impression,
nevertheless, is perhaps deeper than any other; I think it
possible I may forget the sensations with which I watched the
long course of the gigantic Mississippi; the Ohio and the Potomac
may mingle and be confounded with other streams in my memory, I