is a broad,
shallow, muddy river, at places the channel being barely wide enough for
the boat to go through, though to my inexperienced eyes the whole
river looks like a channel. The bottom lands, Illinois on one side
and Missouri on the other, are sometimes over-grown with forests and
sometimes great rich cornfields, with here and there a house, here and
there villages, and now and then a little town. At every such place
all the people of the neighborhood have gathered to greet me. The
water-front of the towns would be filled with a dense packed mass of
men, women, and children, waving flags. The little villages have not
only their own population, but also the farmers who have driven in in
their wagons with their wives and children from a dozen miles back--just
such farmers as came to see you and the cavalry on your march through
Iowa last summer.

It is my first trip on the Mississippi, and I am greatly interested in
it. How wonderful in its rapidity of movement has been the history of
our country, compared with the history of the old world. For untold
ages this river had been flowing through the lonely continent, not very
greatly changed since the close of the Pleistocene. During all these
myriads of years the prairie and the forest came down to its banks.
The immense herds of the buffalo and the elk wandered along them season
after season, and the Indian hunters on foot or in canoes trudged along
the banks or skimmed the water. Probably a thousand years saw no change
that would have been noticeable to our eyes. Then three centuries
ago began the work of change. For a century its effects were not
perceptible. Just nothing but an occasional French fleet or wild half
savage French-Canadian explorer passing up or down the river or one
of its branches in an Indian canoe; then the first faint changes, the
building of one or two little French fur traders' hamlets, the passing
of one or two British officers' boats, and the very rare appearance of
the uncouth American backwoodsman.

Then the change came with a rush. Our settlers reached the head-waters
of the Ohio, and flatboats and keel-boats began to go down to the mouth
of the Mississippi, and the Indians and the game they followed began
their last great march to the west. For ages they had marched back and
forth, but from this march there was never to be a return. Then the day
of steamboat traffic began, and the growth of the first American cities
and states along the