Mississippian

“ Norton, who had uttered an epigram now celebrated in the tap-rooms of Washington, 'The paths of glory lead but to the graft.'"
"Miss Langdon is very beautiful and attractive, sir," said Haines, resuming with the Senator.
"Yes," drawled the Mississippian. "Girls in the South generally are." ”

“ The Mississippians are remarkable for their "locomotivity;" an organ which they have plainly developed, if we reason, as phrenologists sometimes do, from effect to cause—and whose existence is manifest from their propensity annually to depopulate their state, by taking northern tours during the summer months. ”

“ There is the humming of bees, singing of birds and a fragrance indescribable. The Mississippi stretches away like a great silver serpent between golden meadows and headlands on either side, until it becomes a mere glint of light in the distance. ”

“ I was surprised at this, As I had understood from our Great Father that the Mississippi was to be the dividing line between his red and white children, and he did not wish either to cross it. I was much pleased with this talk, and I knew it would be much better for both parties. I have since found the country much settled by the whites further down, and near to our people, on the west side of the river. I am very much afraid that in a few years they will begin to drive and abuse our people, as they have formerly done. ”

“ Many Americans have made long trips to see the beauties of the Rhine and the Danube; the far grander beauty of the Mississippi is to our own people still an unexplored country. There are awaiting those who would go and see a thousand Inspiration Points on the upper Mississippi and ten thousand miles of semi-tropical wilderness, cane-brake, forest, lakes, and bayous on the lower river and its southern tributaries. Most Americans know the Mississippi only as a crooked black line on the map. ”

“ Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. ”

“ And o'er its breast their gorgeous image fling.
The Mississippi needs no herald now—
But here within this glen unknown to fame,
It flows content—a bubble on its brow,
A leaf upon its breast—without a name!
Banks of the Mississippi II.
Strange contrasts here—for on the glacier's height,
The tempest raves, and arrowy lightnings leap—
Yet deep beneath, the wild flowers lone and light,
On slender stems in breezeless silence sleep. ”

“ The uprising of the people of Mississippi against Negro rule was a most magnificent example of that spirit of Southern patriotism that animated the hearts; first of such men as Walthall, Lamar, George, Featherston, Stone, Lowry and Harris, and then spread to the hearts of every true man in Mississippi. The young men of the State, the rising generation, have the greatest reverence and love for the brave men who fought such a gallant fight for the preservation of white supremacy in Mississippi. ”

“ In this view, how noble an object is the Mississippi!
In extent, fertility, variety of scenery, and diversity of climate, its valley surpasses any other in the world. It is the great aorta of the continent, and receives a score of tributary rivers, the least of which is larger than the vaunted streams of mighty empires. It might furnish natural boundaries to all Europe, and yet leave, for every country, a river greater than the Seine. ”

“ Here the Indians come with their furs from that immense country lying between the Mississippi and the Missouri, the western boundary of Minnesota, and the forests still undespoiled of their primeval wealth, and the rivers and lakes abounding in fish, offer their inexhaustible resources, whilst the great Mississippi affords the means of their conveyance to the commercial markets of the world, flowing, as it does, through the whole of Central America down to New Orleans. ”

“ One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. ”

“ To-day the timber of the hickories from its bottoms are the spokes of automobiles, and the handles of golf-clubs are sought among the dark corners of its brakes. Millions eat its fish, and the sheen of pearls from its tributaries delights countless women. There is scarcely a garment in the country that might not be improved by a button from a Mississippi clam-shell.
Whatever men may do to the Mississippi, the Father of Waters does not neglect their interests, nor does he fail to rebuke their impertinences and to stimulate their imagination. ”

“ Above all, the valley of the Mississippi was ordained by God as the residence of a united people. Over every acre of its soil must forever float the banner of the Union, and all its waters, as they roll on together to the Gulf, proclaim that what 'God has joined together, man shall never put asunder.' The nation's life-blood courses this vast arterial system, and to sever it is death. ”

“ Forever the yellow Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles to destroy;—and amid their eternal strife the islands and the promontories change shape, more slowly, but not less fantastically, than the clouds of heaven. ”

“ What have you studied geography for if you don't know what river that is?"
"Oh, I know!" shouted Ruth, "I know, Father! It's the Mississippi! This is Illinois, that State over there is Iowa, and that is the Mississippi that flows between!"
"Ah, good girl!" applauded her father. "Of course! The Mississippi—the great Father of Waters. And the boundary line "—he continued thoughtfully, speaking more to himself than the children,—"between the old East and the new West."
"The Mississippi at last—hurray!" shouted Joe.
"Huh, I knew it all the time," grunted Sam. "Ruth needn't think she's so smart. ”

“ A foreign power holding the mouth of the Mississippi! In the earlier stages of our history it was regarded as a self-evident truth that such power must be or become our natural enemy. But if at that time, when the great Mississippi Valley was a silently brooding wilderness, it was thought that we must have the mouth of the river, because the foreign hand that held it might choke our future development, what shall we say now when the Mississippi Valley has become the garden of America, the seat of empire? ”

“ The vast and almost wholly unknown territory west of the Mississippi, claimed by France, in virtue of her discoveries and settlements on the great river, until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain, was held by that country in 1800. This cession gave Spain complete control of the lower course of the Mississippi, since her province of Florida extended to the east bank of the stream. And she held it in a manner that proved deeply annoying to the American settlers in the west, to whom free navigation of the Mississippi was of great and growing importance. ”

“ The mighty Mississippi, however, the great and everlasting highway on which these people are for ever to intermingle their interests and manners, will effectually soften down those prejudices, and eventually result in an amalgamation of feelings and customs, from which this huge mass of population will take one new and general appellation. ”

“ People were too scattered down the Mississippi to think of congregations. All days were Sunday, and for him there could be no day of rest. If he could not do big work, at least he could meet men and women, and he could get to know little children, to understand their needs. He knew it was a good thought, and when he looked across the Mississippi, he saw night coming on, but between him and the dark was sunset. ”

“ May Mississippi see not another Scott but a literary man who under new conditions and with new material may create for Mississippi a new literature which may have like place in the world's literature with the immortal contributions of the great Scotchman. ”

“ The Mississippi, itself, has lost none of its taunts to daring spirits, as a river, and it has added countless varieties of venturesome amusement; even savage human nature does not change, but the resources of the mind give the Mississippi today what La Salle himself could never have found. ”

“ Meanwhile, the adventurous French were spurred on by the discovery of the upper Mississippi. Radisson called the Mississippi, in conjunction with the Missouri, the Forked River “because [Pg 190] it has two branches, the one towards the west, the other towards the south, which we believe runs toward Mexico.” Jesuit priests, probing the hinterland, wrote that the savages assured them the Mississippi was “so noble a river that, at more than three hundred leagues’ distance from its mouth, it is larger than the one flowing before Quebec; for they declare it is more than a league wide.... ”

“ As if not content with the mischief, the Mississippi sometimes takes a fancy to make a cut off; instead of following the curve or bend which it has made into the country for perhaps twenty miles, it dashes with fury against the earth in front until it cuts its way through and reaches its former channel, tearing away with it houses, lands, and whatever had stood in its path. ”

“ What right have we to tell any people, 'You shall not cross the Mississippi River on any pretext whatever'? When the Sauk and Fox Indians wish to cross the Mississippi, to visit their relations among the Pottowattamies of Fox River, Illinois, they are prevented by us, because we have the power! ”

“ They perfume the night and the busy daylight dispels them like the morning mists that we used to watch steaming and vanishing above the old river. The Mississippi is still here, still rolling along its eternal multitudes of snows and flowers and fruits and fish and snakes and dead men and boats and trees. ”

“ This is a beautiful stream, running through the north west part of Illinois into the Mississippi. The land is prairie upon its borders, which will well repay the agriculturist’s labors, while{131} its rapids place a great amount of manufacturing power at the disposal of the settlers. The lead region is also in its vicinity. At the mouth of Rock river, in the Mississippi, is a pretty island of limestone, three miles long, which is occupied by fort Armstrong, garrisoned by United States troops. Dixonville on this river is a growing town. ”

“ Like the gray locks of age, it reminds the passer by of centuries gone, when the red savage in his canoe toiled upon its turbid flood; it recalls the day of discovery, when De Soto and La Salle sought its mighty torrent in search of gain, and found death; and now looms before us the noblest picture of all, the existence of a maturing civilization upon its banks. Associated thus with an ever-present suggestion of a remarkable and ever-forming antiquity, the Mississippi becomes indeed the wonder of waters. ”

“ I know not what most men see in voyaging down the Mississippi. If gay and hopeful, probably much of beauty and interest. If eager merchants, probably a golden river, freighted with the wealth of nations. I saw nothing but portents of woe and despair. Wretched slave-pens ”

“ The Mississippi was high and raging. All the low-lying country for half a hundred miles was flooded till it looked like a vast sea, with forests of trees standing in its midst. Here and there, too, a plantation, higher than the surrounding country, was noticeable. The first pass into Moon Lake was but a mile long. But through that pass swirled and roared the waters of the Mississippi, so suddenly let loose by the break in the levee.
At just four in the evening our little steamer got the order to turn out of the river and into the rushing waters of the pass. ”

“ Wood-pulp and cheap editions have opened the flood-gates of genius upon the world; and the days of our noble forests are numbered; for one tree is sawn into shelves to hold another ground into paper. And already, through the denudation of the land, the Mississippi grows uncontrollable, taxing even the wisdom of Congress. ”

“ The whole of the Mississippi is ours, with far more than a thousand miles of its course from Columbus to its mouth, and even to a considerable extent up the Mississippi and Missouri, which had been once in the hands of the enemy. ”

“ The tribes that lived to the west of the Mississippi appear to have been for the most part more strictly nomad. The open character of the country, with its vast tracts of prairie, and its herds of buffalo and other game, no doubt helped to encourage a wandering life. The Crees, the Blackfeet, the Sioux, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Apaches were all of this class, and with their interminable feuds and perpetual migrations rendered all settled life impossible. ”

“ It is packed full of things people ought to know. Not only is there a full and well-written account of the finding of the true source of the Mississippi, but a wonderful amount of fact and incident picked up along its shores from its headwaters clear down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ I have so frequently spoken of the Mississippi, that an account of the progress of navigation on that extraordinary stream may be interesting even to the student of nature. I shall commence with the year 1808, at which time a great portion of the western country, and the banks of the Mississippi River, from above the City of Natchez particularly, were little more than a waste, or, to use words better suited to my feelings, remained in their natural state. ”