Life on The Mississippi Read Free

instinct, “he must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.” The great river itself had been an alphabet, a language, a primer, and a book with “a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one you could leave unread without loss.” The next such story, after Life on the Mississippi, was to be Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .
     
    —Justin Kaplan

The “Body of the Nation”
    But the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF THE NATION. All the other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important in their relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and of 300,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which in many aspects form a part of it, this basin contains about 1,250,000 square miles. In extent it is the second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by that of the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that of the La Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity, having aboutof its area; then comes that of the Yenisei, with about; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang-tsekiang, and Nile,; the Ganges, less than ½; the Indus, less than ⅓; the Euphrates, ⅕; the Rhine,. It exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and Sweden. It would contain Austria four times, Germany or Spain five times. France six times, the British Islands or Italy ten times. Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western Europe are rudely shocked when we consider the extent of the valley of the Mississippi; nor are those formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the mighty sweep of the swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all combine to render every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of supporting a dense population. As a dwelling-place for civilized man it is by far the first upon our globe.
     
    —EDITOR’S TABLE, Harper’s Magazine, February, 1863.

Afterword
    There is, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, a symmetry to the continent of North America, a classical proportion provided by the great river that bisects the United States. The Mississippi provides a diagonal that stretches from the southernmost to the northernmost continental extremities, pointing toward Canada at one end and the Gulf of Mexico at the other. Toward the east, the contributory Ohio River stretches into the foothills of the Allegheny range; toward the west, there is the Missouri, whose tributaries flow out of the Rocky Mountains. This east-west configuration was viewed by Colonial geopoliticians like Thomas Jefferson as a riverine corridor for expanding empire, and in fact the three great rivers served for nearly a century as the route for westering Americans. By 1825 it was abetted by the Erie Canal and in 1832 by the Ohio system of canals, connecting the Hudson River with its western counterparts.
    Although the Mississippi contributed a relatively short length along this great diagram, from the start it was seen as the single most important river on the American continent, serving as a vital commercial waterway joining the North to the South. As an adjunct to an expanding empire, however, the Mississippi seemed an often unwilling ally, thanks in large part to the muddy might of the Missouri, which drew a turbulent flood from the far-western regions. This fierce current restrained ambitions for the commercial exploitation of the great central valley, for navigation of the Mississippi was at first limited to raft, keel, and flatboat, slow-moving vessels whose passage was hampered by attacks from Indians, river pirates, and the ever-present hazards provided by snags and shifting sandbars.
    We associate the invention of the steamboat with Robert Fulton and the Hudson River, but both Fulton and his unfortunate predecessor, “Poor” John Fitch, had the