The navigation of the Missouri is thought to be the most hazardous and difficult of any of the Western rivers, owing to its mad, impetuous current, to the innumerable obstructions in its bed, and the incessant variation of its channel.[165] Insurance and pilotage [252] upon this river are higher than on others; the season of navigation is briefer, and steamers never pursue their course after dusk. Its vast length and numerous tributaries render it liable, also, to frequent floods, of which three are expected every year. The chief of these takes place in the month of June, when the heaped-up snows of the Rocky Mountains are melted, and, having flowed thousands of miles through the prairies, reach the Mississippi. The ice and snows of the Alleghanies, and the wild-rice lakes of the far Upper Mississippi, months before have reached their destination, and thus a general inundation, unavoidable had the floods been simultaneous, is prevented by Providence. The alluvions of the Missouri are said to be higher than, and not so broad as, those of the Mississippi; yet their extent is constantly varying by the violence of the current, even more than those of the latter stream. Many years ago the flourishing town of Franklin was completely torn away from its foundations, and its inhabitants were forced to flee to the adjacent heights; and the bottom opposite St. Charles and at numerous other places has, within the few years past, suffered astonishing changes.[166] Opposite the town now flow the waters of the river where once stood farms and orchards.
The source of the Missouri and that of the Columbia, we are told, are in such immediate proximity, that a walk of but a few miles will enable the traveller to drink from the fountains of each. Yet how unlike their destiny! One passes off through a region of boundless prairie equal in extent to a [253] sixth of our globe; and, after a thousand wanderings, disembogues its troubled waters into the Mexican Gulf; the other, winding away towards the setting sun, rolls on through forests untrodden by human footstep till it sleeps in the Pacific Seas. Their destinies reach their fulfilment at opposite extremes of a continent! How like, how very like are the destinies of these far, lonely rivers to the destinies of human life! Those who, in the beautiful starlight of our boyhood, were our schoolmates and play-fellows, where are they when our sun of ripened maturity has reached its meridian? and what, and where are they and we, when evening's lengthening shadows are gathering over the landscape of life? Our paths diverged but little at first, but mountains, continents, half a world of waters may divide our destinies, and opposite extremes of "the great globe itself" witness their consummation. Yet, like the floods of the far-winding rivers, the streams of our existences will meet again, and mingle in the ocean—that ocean without a shore—ETERNITY!
The gates of the Rocky Mountains, through which the waters of the Missouri rush forth into the prairies of the great Valley, are described as one of the sublimest spectacles in nature. Conceive the floods of a powerful mountain-torrent compressed in mid career into a width of less than one hundred and fifty yards, rushing with the speed of "the wild horse's wilder sire" through a chasm whose vast walls of Nature's own masonry rear themselves on either side from the raging waters to the precipitous [254] height of twelve hundred perpendicular feet; and then consider if imagination can compass a scene of darker, more terrible sublimity! And then sweep onward with the current, and within one hundred miles you behold a cataract, next to Niagara, from all description grandest in the world. Such are some of the mighty features of the stream upon which I was now standing.
As to the much disputed question which of the great streams of the West is entitled to the name of the Main River, I shall content myself with a brief statement of the arguments alleged in support of the pretensions of either claimant. The volume of the Missouri at the confluence far exceeds that of its rival; the length of its course and the number and magnitude of its tributaries are also greater, and it imparts a character to the united streams. On the other hand, the Mississippi, geographically and geologically considered, is the grand Central River of the continent, maintaining an undeviating course from north to south; the valley which it drains is far more extensive and fertile than that of the Missouri; and from the circumstance of having first been explored, it has given a name to the great river of the Western Valley which it will probably ever retain, whatever the right. "Sed non nostrum tantas componere lites."
St. Charles, Mo.
XXIII
"Say, ancient edifice, thyself with years
Grown gray, how long upon the hill has stood
Thy weather-braving tower?"
Hurdis.
"An honourable murder, if you will;
For naught he did in hate, but all in honour."
"The whole broad earth is beautiful
To minds attuned aright."
Robt. Dale Owen.