ft so rapidly as to wipe out of existence prosperous
farms and homes. Sometimes this erratic procedure threatens the very
existence of cities and bridges, and tens of thousands of dollars have
been spent from time to time in day and night work to check the
aggression of the stream and to compel it to confine itself to its
proper limits.

The Mississippi proper brings down from the lakes to its junction with
the Missouri River clear water, in which the reflection is so vivid,
that the verdure on the banks gives it quite a green appearance. The
Missouri, on the other hand, is muddy and turbulent, bringing with it
even at low water a large quantity of sand and sediment. At high water
it brings with it trees and anything else that happens to come within
its reach, but at all periods of the year its water is more or less
muddy. At the junction of the two rivers the difference in color of the
water is very apparent, and, strange to say, there is not a complete
intermingling until several miles have been covered by the current.
Under ordinary conditions, the western portion of the current is very
much darker in shade than the eastern, even twenty miles from what is
generally spoken of as the mouth of the Missouri.

The Muddy Missouri rises in the Rocky Mountains. It is really formed by
the junction of three rivers--the Jefferson, the Gallatin and the
Madison. By a strange incongruity, the headwaters of the Missouri are
within a mile of those of the Columbia, although the two rivers run in
opposite directions, the Columbia entering the Pacific Ocean and the
Missouri finding an inlet to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi. At
a distance of 441 miles from the extreme point of the navigation of the
head branches of the Missouri, are what are denominated as the "Gates of
the Rocky Mountains," which present an exceedingly grand and picturesque
appearance. For a distance of about six miles the rocks rise
perpendicularly from the margin of the river to the height of 1,200
feet. The river itself is compressed to the breadth of 150 yards, and
for the first three miles there is but one spot, and that only of a few
yards, on which a man can stand between the water and the perpendicular
ascent of the mountain.

At a distance of 110 miles below this point, and 551 miles from the
source, are the "Great Falls," nearly 2,600 miles from the egress of the
Missouri into the Mississippi River. At this place the river descends by
a succession