The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive--and depressing. League after league, and still league after league,it pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls,its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a sail or a movingobject of any kind to disturb the surface and break the monotonyof the blank, watery solitude; and so the day goes, the night comes,and again the day--and still the same, night after nightand day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity,repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity,realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet,and longed for by the good and thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to cometo America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sortof procession of them--a procession which kept up its plodding,patient march through the 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 itsaspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since thosestrangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then.
The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspectswere not all formed on one pattern, of course; they HADto be various, along at first, because the earlier touristswere obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in oldercountries one can always borrow emotions from one's predecessors.
And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things inthe world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier tomanufacture 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 wishedto behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for allthe trouble I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking atthe 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 laterin the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the Mississippi--'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearanceof this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters,and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never behelda scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi.
Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia fromits horrors. One only object rears itself above the eddying waters;this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to crossthe bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destructionthat 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 ahundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as thatof nature, that you begin to understand all his might and majesty.
You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his coursethe trophies of his thousand victories over the shattered forest--here carrying away large masses of soil with all their growth,and there forming islands, destined at some future period to bethe residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect,it is then time for reflection to suggest that the currentbefore you has flowed through two or three thousand miles, and hasyet to travel one thousand three hundred more before reachingits ocean destination.'
Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea tales,writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray--'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of acentury of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collectedfrom the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi.
The stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which havebeen committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight,bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye lovesto dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander uponits banks, or trust yourself without danger to its stream.
It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil;and few of those who are received into its waters ever rise again,in that day, that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer,nor permit a drowned person's body to rise to the surface.]> or cansupport themselves long upon its surface without assistance fromsome friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatableof fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you descend,its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the pantherbasks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.
Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered withtrees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down wholeforests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion,whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses of soilwhich nourished their roots, often blocking up and changingfor a time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at itsbeing opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round;and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel,plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon,the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurousnavigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealeddangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not timeto steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom.
There are no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewerof the Western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf,polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth.
It is a river of desolation; and instead of reminding you,like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descendedfor the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energieshave been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.'
It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed tohandling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions sentweltering through this noted visitor's breast by the aspectand traditions of the 'great common sewer,' it has a value.
A value, though marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies;for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish for anybody,and there are no panthers that are 'impervious to man.'
Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law,with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows--'The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt myselfafloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in my wakingvisions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream,rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless region to which ithas given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean,the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate zone!
Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, steaming against its tide.
I looked upon it with that reverence with which everyone must regard a greatfeature of external nature.'
So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark uponthe deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river.
Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says--'Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles withoutseeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a paintingof the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.'
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago,the old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists,pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and tediousdiscovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great river--La Salle, whose name will last as long as the river itself shall last.
We quote from Mr. Parkman-'And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixthof April, the river divided itself into three broad channels.
La Salle followed that of the west, and D'Autraythat of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage.
As he drifted down the turbid current, between the lowand marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine,and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea.
Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight,tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as whenborn of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.'
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column 'bearingthe arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms;and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked onin wondering silence, they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT,and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM.'
Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth,the victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamationin a loud voice, taking formal possession of the river andthe vast countries watered by it, in the name of the King.
The column bore this inscription-LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL,1682.
New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year,the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event;but when the time came, all her energies and surplus money wererequired in other directions, for the flood was upon the land then,making havoc and devastation everywhere.
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