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There is no afternoon service here until 8 P.M. So I shall occupy part of the P.M. in writing Letters. After I left you at Elyria, I stopped about two days at Chicago, and reached DuQuoin on Sat. Night. I staid thereabout nine days, leaving again last Monday night at 12 P.M. and on Wednesday night July 4th left Dunleith on the Minnesota Packet Galena. The river was rather cold, and we were delayed by fogs so as to be obliged to lay up nights, and did not arrive here until Saturday morning. The Upper Mississippi! I cannot describe it. You must come up here some time to see it for yourselves. If there is any river scenery in the world to compare with it, it is somewhere that I have not seen. The beauty of the Hudson River Scenery! Why the Hudson can about as well compare with the Upper Mississippi as a Trout Brook with Niagara. There - I suppose I am wild - but I was really carried away with it - I did not expect any thing of the kind, and really could not make any comparisons. The River valley is from two to unclear miles wide, bordered by bluffs 200 to 400 feet high in every variety; some times bald perpendicular or overhanging walls of rock, like the Hudson river palisades; sometimes rocky walls, half concealed in trees & shrubbery; sometimes beautiful green grassy slopes to the very top: sometimes sprinkled with trees like orchards: sometimes part grassy slopes, and partly terraced