land during many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went home and
published a book--a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable,
kind; but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed
progenitors. A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of
its aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those
strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then. The
emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects were not all
formed on one pattern, of course; they HAD to be various, along at
first, because the earlier tourists were obliged to originate their
emotions, whereas in older countries one can always borrow emotions from
one's predecessors. And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest
things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to
manufacture seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall. R.N.,
writing fifty-five years ago, says--

'Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wished to
behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for all the trouble
I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking at the river
flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish anything. But it was
not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times, that I came to a
right comprehension of the grandeur of the scene.'

Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is writing a few months
later in the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the
Mississippi--

'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearance of this
mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, and mingling with
the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never beheld a scene so utterly
desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he
might have drawn images of another Borgia from its horrors. One only
object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a
vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still
stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding
prophet of that which is to come.'

Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis), seven years
later--

'It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a hundred
miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of nature, that
you begin to understand all his might and majesty. You see him
fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his course the trophies
of