We went on Sunday to the Episcopal church.
There was the Communion service, and a very good sermon on the subject
of that ordinance.
We yesterday returned to St. Louis, and after a brief halt came on here.
As our journey back to St. Louis was in the daytime, we had an
opportunity of seeing the very interesting country which we passed on
Saturday in the dark. The most remarkable feature of the road was
crossing the Osage within 200 or 300 yards of its confluence with the
Missouri. It is about 1,200 feet broad, and we saw in it one of those
beautiful steamboats which give so much character here to the rivers.
The Osage is navigable for these large boats for 200 miles above this
place. We passed various other rivers, among others the Gasconade, at a
spot memorable for a terrible catastrophe which happened on the day of
the opening of the railway, when the first bridge which crossed it gave
way as the train was passing, and nine out of thirteen cars were
precipitated into the bed of the river; thirty people, chiefly leading
characters of St. Louis, were killed, and many hundreds desperately
hurt.
We have little more to say of St. Louis, as the museum was the only
public building we visited. The great curiosity there is the largest
known specimen of the mastodon. It is almost entire from the tip of its
nose to the tip of its tail, and measures ninety-six feet in length.
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