America, Volume 6 (of 6)

In the early days of Congress, a North Carolina member, who was making a long speech for home consumption, observed that several of his colleagues, becoming tired, had gone out, whereupon he bluntly told those who remained that they might go out too, if so inclined, as he "was only talking for Buncombe." This member, whose remark has become immortal as the title of a certain type of Congressional oratory, represented the county of Buncombe, which embraces a large portion of the "The Land of the Sky," and Asheville is the county-seat. This town has a permanent population of twelve thousand, and is one of the most elevated towns east of Denver, being at a height of nearly twenty-three hundred feet above the sea. It is built in the attractive valley of the French Broad River, surrounded by an amphitheatre of magnificent hills, and commands one of the finest mountain views in this country. The Swannanoa unites with the French Broad just above the town in a charming locality; there are various pleasant parks; and the tree-shaded streets are adorned by many fine buildings. To Asheville come the Northerner for equable mildness in winter and the Southerner for coolness in summer, the climate being dry and bright, and most restorative in lung and other similar troubles, while the whole surrounding region has had its scenic attractions made available by improved roads and paths. About two miles to the southeast is George Vanderbilt's noted chateau of Biltmore, the finest private residence in the United States, built upon the verge of a princely estate covering a hundred thousand acres of these glens and mountains. The house, which commands magnificent views, stands upon a terrace seven hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide, and cost $4,000,000, while nearly as much more is said to have been expended in constructing many miles of drives over the estate and in landscape gardening and improvements, which in time will make this one of the world's greatest show places. The building is an extensive French baronial hall of the days of King Francis I., elaborated from the chateaux of the Loire, exceedingly rich in every detail, and having the general effect heightened by the free employment of decorative sculpture. From the grand esplanade the outlook is upon the "wild tumult of mountains stretching away in every direction." There are various other fine houses in the Asheville suburbs, and the locality is steadily improving through the attractions it has for men of wealth who love a home amid the grandest charms of Nature. Routes have been opened in various directions from Asheville to develop the mountain district. One railroad goes for a hundred miles through the gorges and valleys southwestward along the base of the Great Smoky range. Another route is southeast through the romantic pass of the Hickory-nut Gap, where the Rocky Broad River penetrates the Blue Ridge, a splendid canyon of nine miles, with cliffs rising fifteen hundred feet and having the remarkable Chimney Rock built on high alongside the gorge, where it stands up an isolated sentinel. Bald Mountain, rising opposite, is celebrated in Mrs. Burnett's Esmeralda. Cæsar's Head, to the southward, is an outlier of these mountain ranges, bordering the lowlands; and standing on top of its southern brow, upon a precipice rising almost sheer for fifteen hundred feet, one can overlook the lower regions of South Carolina and Georgia for more than a hundred miles away.

The French Broad River, the chief stream of this charming region, got its name from the early hunters who came up from the settled regions of Carolina nearer the coast, and penetrating the mountains explored it. The Cherokees called it Tselica, or "The Roarer," a not inappropriate name. The hunters who came through the Blue Ridge by the Hickory-nut Gap in colonial times followed down the Rocky Broad that flowed out of it into this river, which was much larger, and as the region beyond the mountains was then controlled by the French, they named it the French Broad. It rises in the Blue Ridge range almost on the South Carolina boundary, and nearly interlocks its headwaters with those of the Congaree flowing out to the Atlantic. Its upper waters wind for forty miles through a beautiful and fertile valley, but in approaching Asheville the scenery changes, the hills press more closely upon the stream, its course becomes more rapid, and after a swift turmoil it plunges down the cataract at Mountain Island. Here a knob-topped rock rises fifty to seventy feet high, the stream forcing its way on either hand by a channel cut through the enclosing ridge, and it descends a cataract of forty-five feet, running away through a deep abyss. The river passes Asheville and flows in a most picturesque gorge through the high mountains, everywhere disclosing new beauties, the water rushing and roaring over ledges and boulders, going around sharp bends, receiving gushing tributaries coming down the mountain side or trickling over the face of some broad high cliff. Massive rocks rise on high, and the road is often on a shelf cut into their face, the river boiling along far down below. Then the valley broadens, and here, in a lovely vale surrounded by the mountains, are the North Carolina Hot Springs, a popular resort, with a climate even milder in winter than at Asheville, as the Great Smoky range protects it from the northern blasts. The curative properties of these springs are efficacious in rheumatic and cutaneous diseases. Beyond, the bold precipices overhang the road and river that are known as the Paint Rocks, where the rushing torrent forces its way through a gorge between the Great Smoky and Bald Mountains and then emerges in Tennessee, to finally fall into the Tennessee River at the junction with the Holston just above Knoxville. These rocks received their name from Indian pictures and signs painted upon them. William Gillmore Simms, the Carolina author, tells in Tselica the legend of this spot, founded on the tradition of the Cherokees that a siren lives on the French Broad who allures the hunter to the stream and strangles him in her embrace. Thus have the American aborigines reproduced in their way on this beautiful river the romantic legends of the Lorelie Rock on the Rhine, where, the ancient German legend tells us so interestingly, there dwelt another beautiful siren whose seductive music lured her lovers to the rock, when she drowned them in the waves washing its base.

CAROLINA AND GEORGIA.

Eastward from the Blue Ridge the extended line of the Piedmont Branch of the Southern Railway parallels the base of the range on its route from Washington southwest to Atlanta. The railroad from Asheville southeast to Columbia and Charleston crosses it at Spartansburg in South Carolina. This is a prosperous little town in a region of iron and gold-mines, with also a development of mineral springs, attractive as a summer resort to the people of Charleston and residents of the South Carolina lowlands. Ten miles northeast of Spartansburg is the Revolutionary battlefield of the Cowpens, getting its name from the adjacent cow-pasture in the olden time. Here on a hill-range called the Thickety Mountain, January 17, 1781, the British under Tarleton were signally defeated. The railway passes through a rolling country, and thirty-three miles farther northeast is King's Mountain, where the previous battle was fought, October 7, 1780, in which the British under Colonel Ferguson were also defeated and a large part of their forces captured. Beyond, the boundary is crossed from South to North Carolina and Charlotte is reached, having cotton factories and gold mines and twelve thousand people, the county-seat of Mecklenburg, where the famous resolutions were passed, May 20, 1775, demanding independence. Farther northeast is Salisbury, where was located one of the chief Confederate prisons during the Civil War, and the National Cemetery now contains the graves of over twelve thousand soldiers who died there in captivity. Beyond this, the Yadkin River is crossed, and the route enters the tobacco district. Here is Greensboro', and near it the Revolutionary battle of Guilford Court House was fought March 15, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis defeated General Greene. To the eastward is Chapel Hill, the seat of the University of North Carolina, with three hundred students. Farther east is the great tobacco town of Durham, with large factories and six thousand people supported by this industry, whose education is cared for by Trinity College, which has been munificently endowed by the tobacco princes Colonels Duke and Carr. Twenty-five miles still farther east is Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, built on high ground near the Neuse River. It has a central Union Square from which fine streets diverge, and here is located the impressive State House, modelled after the Parthenon. Raleigh has various public institutions, and large cemeteries where the dead of both armies who fell in the Civil War are buried.

The Congaree River, flowing southeast out of the Blue Ridge, intersects the extensive Pine Barrens of South Carolina, and here on the railway route from Asheville via Spartansburg to Charleston is the South Carolina State capital, Columbia. It is built on the bluffs along the river, a few miles below its falls, and in a charming location, the view of the valley from the grounds of the Executive Mansion and Arsenal Hill being very fine. The South Carolina State House is a magnificent building on which a large sum has been expended, and in the grounds is a monument to the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolinians who served with distinction in the war with Mexico. It was here that the Nullification Ordinance was passed in 1832, and the Secession Ordinance in December, 1860. General Sherman, on his march from Atlanta to the sea in February, 1865, occupied Columbia, when, unfortunately, the city was set fire and a large portion destroyed. The Pine Barrens and sand hills of South Carolina stretch southwestward from the Congaree to the Savannah River, and in this region is the popular winter resort of Aiken, surrounded by vast forests of fragrant pines growing in a soil of white sand, the town being a gem in the way of gardens and shrubbery which, with the balmy atmosphere, make it additionally attractive. While Aiken does not have a large population, yet it has very wide streets to accommodate them, the main avenue being two hundred and five feet and the cross streets one hundred and fifty feet wide. Its attractiveness of climate is condensed into the statement that the Aiken winter is "four months of June." A few miles westward is the Savannah River, and here at the head of navigation is Augusta, Georgia, on the western bank, a great cotton mart and seat of textile factories, which have attracted a population of thirty-five thousand, the city being known as the "Lowell of the South." The Sibley Cotton Mill is regarded as being architecturally the handsomest factory in the world. The whole surrounding district is an almost universal cotton-field, thus furnishing the raw materials for this industry. Near this mill stands the tall chimney of the Confederate Powder Works, left as a grim memorial of the Civil War. The various mills are served by canals bringing the water for power from the Savannah River at a higher level above the city, with an ample fall. Augusta is regarded as one of the most beautiful of the Southern cities, having wide tree-embowered streets and many ornate buildings, and it fortunately escaped injury during the Civil War. It was laid out by General Oglethorpe, the Georgia founder, on the same artistic plan as Savannah, and he named it after the English princess, Augusta. The Savannah River, the largest of Georgia, and forming the boundary with South Carolina, rises in the Blue Ridge in close proximity to the headwaters of the Tennessee and the Chattahoochee. Its initial streams, the Tugaloo and Kiowee, unite in the Piedmont district to form the Savannah, which then flows four hundred and fifty miles past Augusta and Savannah to the sea.

ATLANTA AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.

The Chattahoochee was the Indian "river of the pictured rocks." Its head-streams rise in the Blue Ridge in northeastern Georgia, and flowing southwest and afterwards south, it forms the western boundary of the State. Then uniting with the Flint River, the two make the Appalachicola, which, crossing Florida, empties into the Gulf. The Chattahoochee in its course passes, about seven miles from the Georgia capital, Atlanta, the "Gate City," the metropolis of the "Empire State of the South," and the chief Southern railway centre. Being largely a growth of the railway system of the "New South," the city is picturesquely situated on a hilly surface, elevated a thousand feet above the sea, and is laid out in the form of a circle of about four miles radius around the Union Passenger Depot, which is the central point. The first house was built at this place in 1836, on an Indian trail to the crossing of the Chattahoochee, whither a railroad was projected, and for several years it was called, for this reason, Terminus, being afterwards incorporated as the town of Marthasville, and named after the Georgia Governor Lumpkin's daughter. In 1845, the first railroads were constructed connecting it with the seaboard, and soon becoming a tobacco and cotton-mart, it grew rapidly, and in 1847 was incorporated as the city of Atlanta, having about twenty-five hundred people. During the Civil War it was a leading Confederate depot of supplies, but its great growth has come since, and largely through the development of the railway system and manufactures, so that now the city and suburbs, which are extensive, have a population approximating two hundred thousand. Its State Capitol is an impressive building, costing $1,000,000, and it has many imposing business and public structures and fine private residences. Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, is a resident of Atlanta. Its great historical event was the memorable siege during the Civil War. The geographical position of the city made it of vital importance to the Confederacy. General Sherman, in his advance southward from Chattanooga in the spring and early summer of 1864, steadily fought and outflanked the Confederates, until in July they fell back behind the Chattahoochee and took a line covering Atlanta, General Hood assuming command July 17th. Sherman crossed the Chattahoochee and then Hood retired to the intrenchments around the city. For several weeks there were manœuvres and battles around Atlanta, until near the end of August, when Sherman had got behind the city, cutting the railways supplying it. On the night of September 1st, Hood evacuated Atlanta, and next day Sherman entered. In this great siege and in the previous contests from Chattanooga the losses of the two armies were sixty-six thousand men, each army having been repeatedly reinforced. This capture sealed the doom of the Confederacy, although there were subsequent battles and movements around Atlanta until November. Then Sherman, reinforcing General Thomas at Nashville, and leaving him to take care of Hood, ran back all the surplus property and supplies to Chattanooga, broke up the railway, cut the telegraph behind him, burnt Atlanta November 12th, and on the 15th started on his famous "March to the Sea," to cut the Confederacy in two, capturing Savannah in December. The destruction of Atlanta was almost complete, every building being burnt excepting a few in the centre, and a number of scattered dwellings elsewhere. After peace came, however, the restoration of Atlanta was rapid and thorough, and it is now one of the most progressive and wealthy Southern cities. It was Sherman's "March to the Sea" which furnished the theme for one of the most inspiriting songs of the Civil War, "Marching Through Georgia":

The railway leading north from Atlanta to Chattanooga exhibits, throughout the line, relics of Sherman's protracted struggle with the Confederates as he pressed southward, and they opposing him were repeatedly outflanked and retired to new defenses. Long ranges of hills cross the country from northeast to southwest, and on their crests are the remains of massive breastworks and battlements which time is gradually obliterating. Dalton, Resaca and Allatoona were all formidable defensive works, and each in turn was outflanked. Rome, the chief town on this route, now has seven thousand people and various factories. To the westward of Atlanta the railway leads a hundred miles to Anniston, Alabama, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge among the rich beds of Alabama iron-ores, and then to Talladega, the Indian "village on the border," where General Jackson fought one of his severest battles with the Creeks. It is now a busy manufacturing town. Beyond is the great industrial city of Birmingham with thirty-five thousand people, founded in 1871, a phenomenal development of the "New South," its industry being exhibited in enormous iron and steel mills, foundries, and similar establishments. Near the city is its El Dorado, the Red Mountain containing vast stores of hematite iron-ores, with abundant coal and limestone, minerals which have made Alabama the third iron-producing commonwealth in the United States, three-fourths of it being made in the Birmingham district. Nearby is another iron town of recent foundation, Bessemer, and a short distance to the southwest the old Alabama city of Tuscaloosa, the seat of the University of Alabama. This Indian word means the "Black Warrior," and thus was named the river, Tuscaloosa being at the head of steamboat navigation on the Black Warrior. The tradition is that before the white man knew this region it was held by a proud and powerful Indian tribe. When De Soto came along in 1540, searching for gold, he encountered these Indians, whose sachem was the fearless and haughty black giant Tuscaloosa. By stratagem De Soto captured the giant and carried him off a hostage down to Mobile, whence he afterwards escaped. This old city is shown on a French map of Louisiana published in 1720.

Southeast of Atlanta is Macon, at the head of navigation on Ocmulgee River, a prominent cotton-shipping city, with twenty-five thousand people. Here is the Wesleyan Female College with four hundred students, founded in 1836, and said to be the oldest female college in the world. To the southward, at Andersonville, was the great Stockade Prison of the Civil War, where large numbers of captured Union soldiers were confined, being so badly treated that thirteen thousand of them died. Henry Wirtz, a Swiss adventurer, was in charge, and the Confederate authorities in two official reports attributed the excessive mortality to the bad management of the prison. A military court after the close of the war convicted Wirtz of excessive cruelty, and he was executed in November, 1865. The prison-grounds are now a park, a memorial monument has been erected, and in an extensive National Cemetery the dead soldiers are buried. Southward of Atlanta is Columbus, with thirty-five thousand people and large cotton, woollen and flour-mills, one of the chief manufacturing cities of the Southern States. It stands on the Chattahoochee, which here rushes down rocky rapids, providing an admirable water-power improved by a massive dam. The river is navigable to the Gulf, and its steamboats have a large trade.

ATLANTA TO MOBILE.

Proceeding southwest from Atlanta, the route crosses the Chattahoochee at West Point, another shipping port for the vast cotton plantations of this region, whence steamboats take the cotton-bales down to the Gulf. Beyond is Tuskegee in Alabama, where is located the famous Industrial and Normal Institute for colored youth, conducted by Booker T. Washington, the distinguished colored educationalist, who was born a slave in Virginia. It was founded in a small way by him in 1881 to meet the needs of education, and particularly to provide for the training of teachers for the colored race, and having greatly grown, has sent out nearly four hundred of its graduates throughout the South, where they are teaching others of their people. It has seventy instructors and over a thousand students; its lands cover nearly four square miles and there are forty-two buildings, many of them substantial brick structures erected by the students, the property being valued at $300,000. Great attention is given to manual training, and this institution, entirely supported by donations and requiring $75,000 annually for its expenses, is doing a great work in furthering the advancement of the colored race in the South.

A short distance westward, the Alabama River is formed by the union of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, and coming down a winding course a few miles from the junction, sweeps around a grand bend to then go away towards the setting sun, and ultimately seek the Gulf. The story is that a wearied Creek Indian, seeking quiet in the far-off land, wandered out of the mountains to the fertile plains of this attractive region. Charmed by the scenery and the beauties of the valley, when he reached the bank of the river he gazed about him, and then struck his spear into the earth, saying Alabama—"Here we Rest." At this grand bend of the river, upon a circle of hills surrounded by rich farming lands, is Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. There was an Indian village here in remote times, and traders came to the place, so that gradually a settlement grew, which in 1817 was made a town and named after the unfortunate General Montgomery who fell in storming Quebec. The bluffs rise to Capitol Hill, crowned with the State House, a small but imposing structure, having from its elevated dome an extensive view. Here was organized the Government of the Confederate States in February, 1861, continuing until the capital was removed to Richmond the following May. In the grounds there is a handsome Confederate Monument. There are thirty thousand people in Montgomery, and it has a large trade in cotton, gathered from the adjacent districts, shipped down the river to Mobile and also by railroad to Savannah for export. In the suburbs are many old-fashioned plantation residences, and the adjacent country is largely a cotton-field, the great Southern staple growing luxuriantly on the black soils of this region. The Alabama people devote themselves chiefly to cotton-growing, and this industry leads throughout the vast section of the South below the Tennessee boundary. This great product is the leading foreign export of the United States, and being indirectly the cause of the Civil War, it brought to the Confederacy the sympathy of the nations of Europe, which were the chief consumers. Cotton is said to have originated in India, and in America was first cultivated for its flowers in Maryland. It was not until about the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, that the invention by Eli Whitney of the cotton-gin enabled the seeds to be easily removed from the lint, and thus enlarged the uses of cotton, so that a rapid increase was given its growth and also its manufacture throughout the civilized world. Both the seed and the lint are now used, the former producing valuable oil.

The Alabama River flows a winding course from Montgomery southwest to Mobile Bay, first going westward to Selma. It passes a region of the finest cotton lands, where originally the old southern plantation system reached its richest development, and where the modern plan of smaller farms has been making some headway since the Civil War. Selma is the entrepôt of what is known as the Alabama "Black Belt," built on a high bluff along the river, and has cotton factories and other industries, including large mills for crushing the cotton-seed and producing the oil. To the westward, over the boundary of the State of Mississippi, is Meridian, a manufacturing town of fifteen thousand people, which has grown around a railway junction. This was the place which General Sherman, in one of his rapid marches, captured in February, 1864, and destroyed, the General reporting that his army made "the most complete destruction of railways ever beheld." Farther westward, on Pearl River, is Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, a small city with an elaborate State House. The Alabama River flows southwest from Selma and joins the Tombigbee River coming from the north, the stream thus formed being the Mobile River. A few miles below the junction it divides into two branches, of which the eastern is called the Tensas, both then dividing into several others and making a sort of delta, but meeting again in a common embouchure at the head of Mobile Bay, the Mobile River being about fifty miles long. The Tombigbee River is four hundred and fifty miles in length, and rises in the hills of Northeastern Mississippi. The name is Indian, and means the "coffin-makers," though why this name was given is unknown. The Tombigbee became celebrated in politics in the early nineteenth century, through a correspondence between the Treasury at Washington and a customs officer at Mobile, wherein the latter, being asked "How far does the Tombigbee River run up?" replied that "The Tombigbee River does not run up; it runs down." He was removed from office for his levity, and the controversy following, which became an acrimonious partisan dispute, gave the river its celebrity.

MOBILE AND ITS BAY.

When De Soto journeyed through Florida and to the Mississippi River, he found in this region the powerful tribe of Mauvillians, and their village of Mavilla is mentioned in early histories of Florida. From this is derived the name of Mobile, on the western bank of the river near the head of Mobile Bay, the only seaport of the State of Alabama, about thirty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This was the original seat of French colonization in the southwest, and for a few years the capital of their colony of Louisiana. It was settled at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1710 the Sieur de Bienville transferred the earliest French colony from Biloxi to Mobile Bay, and many of the first settlers were French Canadians. In 1723, however, the seat of the colonial government was removed from Mobile to New Orleans. In 1763 this region was transferred to England; in 1780 England gave it to Spain; and in 1813 Spain made it over to the United States. The city is laid out upon a plain having a background of low hills; its broad and quiet streets are shaded with live oaks and magnolias; and everywhere are gardens, luxuriant with shrubbery and flowers. There is a population approximating thirty-five thousand, but the city does not make much progress, owing to the difficulties of maintaining a deep-water channel, though this has been better accomplished of late. Cotton export is the chief trade. There are attractive parks, a magnificent shell road along the shore of the bay for several miles, and fine estates with beautiful villas on the hills in the suburbs. The harbor entrance from the Gulf is protected on either hand by Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines, while the remains can be seen of several batteries on the shores of the bay, relics of the Civil War. Over on Tensas River is a ruin, Spanish Fort, one of the early colonial defenses, while in the city is the Guard House Tower, a quaint old structure built in Spanish style. Mobile was held by the Confederates throughout the war, not surrendering until after General Lee had done so in April, 1865, although the Union forces had previously captured the harbor entrance. This capture was one of Admiral Farragut's achievements. Having opened the Mississippi River in 1863, Farragut, in January, 1864, made a reconnoissance of the forts at the entrance to Mobile Bay, and expressed the opinion that with a single iron-clad and five thousand men he could take the city. Several months elapsed, however, before the attempt was made, but in August he got together a fleet of four iron-clads and fourteen wooden vessels, and on the 5th ran past the forts at the entrance, after a desperate engagement, in which one of his ships, the Tecumseh, was sunk by striking a torpedo, and he lost three hundred and thirty-five men. During the fight, Farragut watched it and gave his directions from a place high up in the main rigging of his flagship, the Hartford. Shoal water and channel obstructions prevented his ascending to the city, but in a few days the forts surrendered, the harbor was held, and blockade-running, which had been very profitable, ceased.

Mobile Bay is one of the finest harbors on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Its broad waters have low shores, backed by gentle slopes leading up to forest-clad plateaus behind, a large surface being wooded and displaying fine magnolias and yellow pines, while in the lowland swamps and along the water-courses are cypress, and interspersed the live oak, festooned with gray moss. But almost everywhere Southern Alabama, like Florida, displays splendid pine forests, reminding of Longfellow's invocation to My Cathedral:

And in garden and grove, all about, there is a wealth of semi-tropical flowers and shrubbery, with their rich perfumes crowned by the delicious orange tree, whereof Hoyt thus pleasantly sings:

THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

XX.

THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

The Father of Waters—Its Drainage Area—The Big Muddy—Sources of the Missouri—The Great Falls—Fort Benton—Sioux City—Council Bluffs—Omaha—St. Joseph—Atchison—Leavenworth—Lawrence—Topeka—Osowatomie—John Brown—Kansas Emigrants—The Walls of Corn—Kansas City—Wyandotte—Chillicothe—Florida—Mark Twain—Muscatine—Burlington—Nauvoo—Keokuk—Des Moines—St. Louis—Jefferson Barracks—Egypt—Belmont—Columbus—Island No. 10—Fort Pillow—The Chickasaws—Memphis—Mississippi River Peculiarities—Its Deposits and Cut-Offs—The Alluvial Bottom Lands—St. Francis Basin—Helena—White River—Arkansas River—Fort Smith—Little Rock—Arkansas Hot Springs—Washita River—Napoleon—Yazoo Basin—Vicksburg—Natchez Indians—Natchez—Red River—Texarkana—Shreveport—Red River Rafts—Atchafalaya River—Baton Rouge—Biloxi—Beauvoir—Pass Christian—New Orleans—Battle of New Orleans—Lake Pontchartrain—The Mississippi Levees—Crevasses—The Delta and Passes—The Balize—The Forts—South Pass—Eads Jetties—Gulf of Mexico.

THE BIG MUDDY.

The great "Father of Waters," with its many tributaries, drains a territory of a million and a half square miles, in which live almost one-half the population of the United States. The length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico is about twenty-six hundred miles, the actual distance in a direct line being but sixteen hundred and sixty miles. Its name comes from the Ojibway words Misi Sepe, meaning the "great river, flowing everywhere," and the early explorers spelled it "Mesasippi." The Iroquois called it the Kahnahweyokah, having much the same meaning. The upper waters of the Mississippi have already been described in a preceding chapter, and taken in connection with its chief tributary, the Missouri, it is one of the longest rivers in the world, the distance from the source to the Gulf being almost forty-two hundred miles. The Dakotas called this stream Minni-shosha, or the "muddy water," and its popular name throughout the Northwest, from the turbid current it carries, has come to be the "Big Muddy." The head streams rise in Idaho, the Eda Hoe of the Nez Perces, meaning the "Light on the Mountains," and in Wyoming. The name of the Indian nation through whose lands its upper waters flow—the Dakotahs—means the "Confederate People," indicating a league of various tribes. The Mississippi drains practically the whole country between the Appalachian Mountains on the east and the "Continental Divide" of the Rockies on the west.

The Missouri River is formed in southwestern Montana, by the union of the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers. Its length from the source of the Madison River in the Yellowstone National Park to its confluence with the Mississippi above St. Louis is about three thousand miles. The first exploration of the headwaters of the Missouri was by the famous expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark in 1805, who ascended to its sources, and crossing the Rockies descended the Snake and Columbia Rivers into Oregon. They found the confluence of the three rivers making the Missouri, in July, and called it "the Three Forks," at the same time naming the rivers after President Jefferson and his Secretaries of State and the Treasury. The Missouri, from the junction, first flows northward through the defiles of the Rockies, and breaks out of the mountain wall in Prickly Pear Canyon, at the Gate of the Mountains, where the rocky cliffs rise twelve hundred feet. Forty miles northeast it goes down its Great Falls to a lower plateau, having a total descent of nearly five hundred feet, the stream contracting in the gorge to a width of three hundred yards, and tumbling over repeated cascades, with intervening rapids. The Black Eagle descends fifty feet, Colter's Falls twelve feet, the Crooked Falls twenty feet, the Rainbow forty-eight feet, and the Great Falls ninety-two feet, this series of rapids and cascades covering a distance of sixteen miles. Lewis and Clark were the first white men who saw these magnificent cataracts of the Upper Missouri, and they named the different falls. The Black Eagle was named from the fact that on an island at its foot an eagle had fixed her nest on a cottonwood tree. It is recorded by a United States Engineer officer who was there in 1860, that the eagle's nest then still remained in the cottonwood tree on the island, being occupied by a bald eagle of large size. Again in 1872 the nest and the old eagle were still there, and from the longevity of these birds, it was then believed to be the same eagle seen in 1805. The old eagle nest and cottonwood tree are all gone now, and in their place are a big dam, power-house and huge ore-smelter, worked by the ample water-power of the fall. The flourishing town of Great Falls gets its prosperity from these cataracts and is a prominent locality for copper-smelting, having fifteen thousand people. At the head of river navigation, some distance farther down, is the military post of Fort Benton. The river then flows eastward through Montana, receives the Yellowstone at Fort Buford and turns southeast in North Dakota, passing Bismarck, the capital, and flowing south and southeast it becomes the boundary between Nebraska and Kansas on the west, and South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri on the northeast. Its course is through an alluvial valley of great fertility, from which it gathers the sediment with which its waters are so highly charged. Much of the adjacent territory in Dakota and Montana is covered by the extensive reservations of the Indian tribes of the Northwest, where the remnants now live a semi-nomadic life under military guardianship and government control. The river flows past Yankton, a supply post for these reservations, which being the settlement farthest up-stream, was thus named Yankton, meaning "the village at the end." Some distance below, the Big Sioux River flows in, forming the boundary between Dakota and Iowa, and here is Sioux City, where there are forty thousand people, much trade, and important manufactures.

Below here lived the Omahas, or "up-stream" Indians, and soon the Missouri in its onward course flows between Omaha and Council Bluffs. Here the bluffs bordering the river recede for some distance on the eastern bank, making a broad plain adjoining the shore, whither the Indians of all the region formerly came to hold their councils and make treaties. A settlement naturally grew at the Council Bluffs, which is now a city of twenty-five thousand people on the plain and adjacent hills, with fine residences in the numerous glens intersecting the bluffs in every direction. Three bridges cross the Missouri to Omaha, on the western shore, two for railways, one of them being the great steel bridge carrying over the Union Pacific, the pioneer railroad constructed to the Pacific Coast. Omaha is the chief city of Nebraska, the State receiving its name from the Nebraska river, meaning the "place of broad shallow waters." Omaha has over one hundred and fifty thousand people and is built on a wide plateau elevated about eighty feet above the river, from which it gradually slopes upward. It dates from 1854, but did not receive its impetus until the completion of the Pacific Railway converged to it various lines bringing an enormous trade. From its position at the initial point it is known as the "Gate City." There are large manufactures and its meat-packing industries are of the first importance, while its enterprise is giving it rapid growth. The Union Pacific Railroad pursues its route westward through Nebraska, up the valley of the Platte River for several hundred miles, and at Fort Omaha, just north of the city, is the military headquarters of the Department.

THE STATE OF KANSAS.

Various great railways bound to the West cross the Missouri in its lower course. The river flows between Kansas and Missouri, and here are St. Joseph with sixty thousand people, immense railway and stock-yards, and many factories; and Atchison with twenty thousand population and large flouring-mills, where the Atchison railway system formerly had its initial point, though now it traverses the country from Chicago southwest to Santa Fe and the Pacific Ocean. Leavenworth, a city of twenty-five thousand, has grown at the site of Fort Leavenworth, one of the important early posts on the Missouri. To the southward the Kaw or Kansas River flows in, the Indian "Smoky Water," coming from the west, draining the greater part of the State which it names. Upon this river is Lawrence, the seat of the Kansas State University, having a thousand students, and of Haskell Institute, a Government training-school for Indian boys and girls. Westward along the Kansas River broadly spread the vast and fertile prairies making the agricultural wealth of the State, and sixty-seven miles from the Missouri, built on both sides of the river, is Topeka, the capital, having thirty-five thousand people, large mills and an extensive trade with the surrounding farm district. In this eastern portion of Kansas, prior to the Civil War, was fought, often with bloodshed, the protracted border contest between the free-soil and pro-slavery parties for the possession of the State, that had so much to do with bringing on the greater conflict. When Congress passed the bill in 1854 organizing Nebraska and Kansas into territories, an effort began to establish slavery, and the Missourians coming over the border tried to control. They founded Atchison and other places and sent in settlers. At the same time Aid Societies for anti-slavery emigrants began colonizing from New England, large numbers thus coming to preëmpt lands. During four years the contests went on, Lawrence and other towns being besieged and burnt. The first Free-State Constitution was framed at Topeka in 1855, which Congress would not approve, and the following year the pro-slavery Constitution was enacted at Lecompton, which the people rejected. After the Civil War began, Kansas was admitted to the Union in 1861 with slavery prohibited. Among the free-soilers who went out to engage in these Kansas conflicts was old John Brown. Near the Missouri border, to the southward of Kansas River, is the little town of Osowatomie, in the early settlement of which Brown took part. Here he had his fights with the slavery invaders who came over from Missouri, finally burning the place and killing Brown's son, a tragedy said to have inspired his subsequent crusade against Harper's Ferry, which practically opened the Civil War. A monument is erected to John Brown's memory at Osawatomie. The New England emigration to Kansas in those momentous times inspired Whittier's poem, The Kansas Emigrants:

The Civil War ended all these conflicts, and since then Kansas has been eminently peaceful. It is now the leading State of the corn belt which broadly crosses the middle of the United States. Its vast corn crops make the wealth of the people, and as they may be good or poor, the Kansan is in joy or despair. One year the farmers will be overwhelmed with debt; the next brings an ample crop, and they pay their debts and are in affluence. Thus throbs the pulse as the sunshine and rains may make a corn crop in the State that sometimes exceeds three hundred millions of bushels; and then there are not enough railway cars available to carry away the product. In a good crop the cornstalks grow to enormous heights, sometimes reaching twenty feet to the surmounting tassel, and a tall man on tip-toe can about touch the ears, while a two-pound ear is a customary weight, with thirty-five ears to a bushel. These vast cornfields, watched year by year and crop after crop by the hard-working wife of a Kansas farmer, caused her to write the touching lyric which has become the Kansas national hymn, Mrs. Ellen P. Allerton's "Walls of Corn":