e Hudson, an epicurean philosopher.

But the Missouri--my brother--is the eternal Fighting Man!

I love things that yearn toward far seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks
that flow by "Philip's farm" but "go on forever"; the little Ik Walton
rivers, where one may "study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! The
Babylonian streams by which we have all pined in captivity; the
sentimental Danube's which we can never forget because of "that night in
June"; and at a very early age I had already developed a decent respect
for the verbose manner in which the "waters come down at Lodore."

But the Missouri is more than a sentiment--even more than an epic. It is
the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls.
In it I see flung before me all the stern world-old struggle become
materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire,
the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the
breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered
spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness,
the laughter. And in it all the unwearying urge of a purpose, the
unswerving belief in the peace of a far away ocean.

If in a moment of despair I should reel for a breathing space away from
the fight, with no heart for battle-cries, and with only a desire to
pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the
river and cry out into the big spaces: "You who somehow
understand--behold this river! It expresses what is voiceless in me. It
prays for me!"

Not only in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the
imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth--a distance of three thousand
miles--this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps
never before in the history of the world has a river been the
thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so
vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in the
building of the continent Nature fashioned well the scenery for the
great human story that was to be enacted here in the fullness of years.
She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for
the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid
fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains limited only by the rim of
sky; mountains severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the trying of
strong spirits; grotesque volcanic lands--dead, utterly
ultra-human--where athleti