Life on the Mississippi

Life on the Mississippi By Mark Twain An Electronic Classics Series Publication Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) is a publication of The Electronic Classics Series. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Editor, nor any- one associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way. Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), The Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Editor, PSU-Hazleton, Hazleton, PA 18202 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Jim Manis is a faculty member of the English Department of The Pennsylvania State University. This page and any preceding page(s) are restricted by copyright. The text of the following pages is not copyrighted within the United States; however, the fonts used may be. Cover design: Jim Manis Copyright © 1999 - 2013 The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity University. Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain THE ‘BODY OF THE NATION’ BUT THE BASIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI is the body of the nation. All Life the other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important in their relations to this. Exclusive of the on 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 Mississippi second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by that of the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in By extent; that of La Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity, having about eight-ninths of its area; then Mark Twain comes that of the Yenisei, with about seven-ninths; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang-tse-kiang, and Nile, five- [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens] ninths; the Ganges, less than one-half; the Indus, less than one-third; the Euphrates, one-fifth; the Rhine, one-fifteenth. It exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and Sweden. It would contain Autria four times, Germany or Spain five times, France six times, the British Is- lands or Italy ten times. Conceptions formed from the river- 3 Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain basins of Western Europe are rudely shocked when we con- sider the extent of the valley of the Mississippi; nor are those Chapter 1 formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the mighty sweep of the The River and Its History swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude, elevation, and rain- fall all combine to render every part of the Mississippi Valley THE MISSISSIPPI IS WELL WORTH READING ABOUT. It is not a com- capable of supporting a dense population. As a dwelling- monplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. place for civilized man it is by far the first upon our globe. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world—four thousand three hundred miles. It seems EDITOR’S TABLE, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since FEBRUARY 1863 in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times as much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water supply from twenty-eight States and Territo- ries; from Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on the Pacific slope—a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that 4 Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are An article in the New Orleans ‘Times-Democrat,’ based navigable by flats and keels. The area of its drainage-basin is as upon reports of able engineers, states that the river annually great as the combined areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Ire- empties four hundred and six million tons of mud into the land, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Tur- Gulf of Mexico—which brings to mind Captain Marryat’s key; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi rude name for the Mississippi—’the Great Sewer.’ This mud, valley, proper, is exceptionally so. solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hun- It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening dred and forty-one feet high. toward its mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower and The mud deposit gradually extends the land—but only deeper. From the junction of the Ohio to a point half way gradually; it has extended it not quite a third of a mile in the down to the sea, the width averages a mile in high water: two hundred years which have elapsed since the river took its thence to the sea the width steadily diminishes, until, at the place in history. The belief of the scientific people is, that the ‘Passes,’ above the mouth, it is but little over half a mile. At mouth used to be at Baton Rouge, where the hills cease, and the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi’s depth is eighty- that the two hundred miles of land between there and the seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hun- Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age of that piece dred and twenty-nine just above the mouth. of country, without any trouble at all—one hundred and The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable—not in twenty thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch the upper, but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform of country that lies around there anywhere. down to Natchez (three hundred and sixty miles above the The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way—its dis- mouth)—about fifty feet. But at Bayou La Fourche the river position to make prodigious jumps by cutting through nar- rises only twenty-four feet; at New Orleans only fifteen, and row necks of land, and thus straightening and shortening it- just above the mouth only two and one half. self. More than once it has shortened itself thirty miles at a 5 Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain single jump! These cut-offs have had curious effects: they have the whole of that one thousand three hundred miles of old Mis- thrown several river towns out into the rural districts, and sissippi River which La Salle floated down in his canoes, two built up sand bars and forests in front of them. The town of hundred years ago, is good solid dry ground now. The river lies Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff to the right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places. has radically changed the position, and Delta is now two miles Although the Mississippi’s mud builds land but slowly, above Vicksburg. down at the mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with Both of these river towns have been retired to the country its work, it builds fast enough in better protected regions higher by that cut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines up: for instance, Prophet’s Island contained one thousand five and jurisdictions: for instance, a man is living in the State of hundred acres of land thirty years ago; since then the river has Mississippi to-day, a cut-off occurs to-night, and to-morrow added seven hundred acres to it. the man finds himself and his land over on the other side of But enough of these examples of the mighty stream’s ec- the river, within the boundaries and subject to the laws of the centricities for the present—I will give a few more of them State of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper river further along in the book. in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri Let us drop the Mississippi’s physical history, and say a word to Illinois and made a free man of him. about its historical history—so to speak. We can glance briefly The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: at its slumbrous first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at it is always changing its habitat bodily—is always moving its second and wider-awake epoch in a couple more; at its bodily sideways. At Hard Times, La., the river is two miles flushest and widest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding west of the region it used to occupy. As a result, the original chapters; and then talk about its comparatively tranquil present site of that settlement is not now in Louisiana at all, but on epoch in what shall be left of the book.

Load more