hose branches penetrate the Earth on every hand, and add to the current
the tributaries of all climes. In this view, how noble an object is the
Mississippi!

In extent, fertility, variety of scenery, and diversity of climate, its
valley surpasses any other in the world. It is the great aorta of the
continent, and receives a score of tributary rivers, the least of which
is larger than the vaunted streams of mighty empires. It might furnish
natural boundaries to all Europe, and yet leave, for every country, a
river greater than the Seine. It discharges, in one year, more water
than has issued from the Tiber in five centuries; it swallows up near
fifty nameless rivers longer than the Thames; the addition of the waters
of the Danube would not swell it half a fathom; and in a single bend,
the navies of the world might safely ride at anchor, five hundred miles
from sea.

It washes the shores of twelve powerful states, and between its arms
lies space enough for twenty more. The rains which fall upon the
Alleghenies, and the snows that shroud the slopes and cap the summits of
the Rocky mountains, are borne upon its bosom, to the regions of
perpetual summer, and poured into the sea, more than fifteen hundred
leagues from their sources. It has formed a larger tract of land, by the
deposits of its inundations, than is contained in Great Britain and
Ireland; and every year it roots up and bears away more trees, than
there are in the Black Forest. At a speed unknown to any other great
river, it rolls a volume, in whose depths the cathedral of St. Paul's
might be sunk out of sight; and five hundred leagues from its mouth, it
is wider than at thirty.

It annually bears away more acres than it would require to make a German
principality, engulfing more than the revenues of many a petty kingdom.
Beneath its turbid waters lie argosies of wealth, and floating palaces,
among whose gilded halls and rich saloons are sporting slimy creatures;
below your very feet, as you sail along its current, are resting in its
bed, half buried in the sand, the bodies of bold men and tender maidens;
and their imploring hands are raised toward Heaven, and the world which
floats, unheeding, on the surface. There lies, entombed, the son whose
mother knows not of his death; and there the husband, for whose
footstep, even yet, the wife is listening--here, the mother with her
infant still clasped fondly to her breast; and here, united in their
lives, not separ