I am now at New Orleans. We have had a most successful and enchanting tour, and our late voyage I found extremely interesting.

I have been most agreeably disappointed with the Mississippi, which has, in general, the reputation of being monotonous and wearisome from its usually flat banks, and long lines of almost interminable, dense, unvarying forests. I am, on the contrary, quite delighted with it, and watched and gazed on it, day after day, and hour after hour, with ever-newly kindling interest and admiration. These very forests themselves were to me sources of ever-fresh wonder, and the mighty current of that marvellous river, sweeping on like the flow of unpausing Time, carrying all before it, I thought sublimity itself!

That the banks are flat for hundreds and hundreds of miles, I own; but those forests are so grand, so boundless – the breadth of that astounding river is so imposing–its bends and curves so glorious and beautiful –that I could not find it at all monotonous. And then its islands, creeks, bays, branches, and reaches, are so numerous and interesting, and its many magnificent tributaries are so diversified and so splendid, that it did not seem to me in the least degree wearisome or dull.