CHAPTER XIV.
St.Louis .-- Its Situation .-- Motley Population .-- French Creole Traders and Their Dependants .-- Missouri Fur Company-- Mr.Manuel Lisa .-- Mississippi Boatmen .-- Vagrant Indians.
-- Kentucky Hunters--Old French Mansion--Fiddling--Billiards -- Mr.Joseph Miller--His Character--Recruits--Voyage Up the Missouri .-- Difficulties of the River .-- Merits of Canadian Voyageurs.-Arrival at the Nodowa .-- Mr.Robert M'Lellan joins the Party--John Day, a Virginia Hunter.

Description of Him.
-- Mr.Hunt Returns to St.Louis.
ST.

LOUIS, which is situated on the right bank of the Mississippi River, a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, was, at that time, a frontier settlement, and the last fitting-out place for the Indian trade of the Southwest.

It possessed a motley population, composed of the creole descendants of the original French colonists; the keen traders from the Atlantic States; the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee; the Indians and half-breeds of the prairies; together with a singular aquatic race that had grown up from the navigation of the rivers--the "boatmen of the Mississippi"-- who possessed habits, manners, and almost a language, peculiarly their own, and strongly technical.

They, at that time, were extremely numerous, and conducted the chief navigation and commerce of the Ohio and the Mississippi, as the voyageurs did of the Canadian waters; but, like them, their consequence and characteristics are rapidly vanishing before the all-pervading intrusion of steamboats.
The old French houses engaged in the Indian trade had gathered round them a train of dependents, mongrel Indians, and mongrel Frenchmen, who had intermarried with Indians.