its inexhaustible resources."

"Thanks for your advice. I am the more ready to follow it because I
always intended to get to Chicago sometime."

"From Pittsburg," continues the American, "a line runs direct to the
large town of St. Louis on the Mississippi. St. Louis is a junction of
great importance, for not only do a whole series of great railway lines
meet there, but also innumerable steamboats ply from there up the
Mississippi and Missouri, and to all the large towns on their
tributaries. St. Louis is the centre of all the winding waterways which
intersect all parts of the United States. And there you can travel on
comfortable flat-bottomed steamers along the main river to New Orleans,
a great harbour for the export of cotton. You can well conceive what a
blessing and source of wealth this river is to our country. It is of
immense extent, for it is the longest river in the world, if we take its
length from the sources of the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains, and in
the area of its basin it is second only to the Amazons. Its plain is
exceedingly fruitful, and far around its banks grain shoots up out of
the soil to feed many millions of human beings. And its waterways,
ramifying like the nerves of a leaf, facilitate communication and the
transport of goods between the different States.

"You should just see how the great river rises in spring. You might
think you were sailing on a large lake, and, as a matter of fact, it
floods an area as large as Lake Superior. If the Mississippi is a
blessing to men, on the other hand in spring it exacts a heavy tax from
them. The vast volumes of brown, muddy water often cut off sharp bends
from the river-bed and take short cuts through narrow promontories. By
such tricks the length of the river is not infrequently shortened by ten
or twelve miles here and there. But you can imagine the trouble this
causes. A town standing on such a bend may one fine day find itself six
miles from the bank. In another the inhabitants are in danger of being
at any time drowned like cats. A railway bridge may suddenly be
suspended over dry land, while the river has swept away rails and
embankment a little farther off. Our engineers have great difficulty in
protecting constructions from the capricious river in spring. Not a year
passes without the Mississippi causing terrible destruction and
inflicting great loss on those who dwell near its banks, especially in
cattle.

"You have only to see this w