on Landing in the Old Days 192
"Atom II" Landing at Sioux City 193

THE RIVER AND I

THE RIVER AND I

CHAPTER I

THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC

It was Carlyle--was it not?--who said that all great works produce an
unpleasant impression on first acquaintance. It is so with the Missouri
River. Carlyle was not, I think, speaking of rivers; but he was speaking
of masterpieces--and so am I.

It makes little difference to me whether or not an epic goes at a
hexameter gallop through the ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood
of muddy water, ripping out a channel from the mountains to the sea. It
is merely a matter of how the great dynamic force shall express itself.

I have seen trout streams that I thought were better lyrics than I or
any of my fellows can ever hope to create. I have heard the moaning of
rain winds among mountain pines that struck me as being equal, at least,
to _Adonais_. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the
pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance
in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from
the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are
as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ of infinite
things.

In the same sense, I have come to look upon the Missouri as something
more than a stream of muddy water. It gave me my first big boy dreams.
It was my ocean. I remember well the first time I looked upon my
turbulent friend, who has since become as a brother to me. It was from a
bluff at Kansas City. I know I must have been a very little boy, for the
terror I felt made me reach up to the saving forefinger of my father,
lest this insane devil-thing before me should suddenly develop an
unreasoning hunger for little boys. My father seemed as tall as
Alexander--and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at
all. And I should have felt little surprise had he taken me in his arms
and stepped easily over that mile or so of liquid madness. He talked
calmly about it--quite calmly. He explained at what angle one should
hold one's body in the current, and how one should conduct one's legs
and arms in the whirlpools, providing one should swim across.

_Swim across!_ Why, it took a giant even to talk that way! For the
summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far
across the yellow swirl that spread out