Four Months in a Sneak-Box / A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

MY floating home was now upon the broad Mississippi, which text-book geographers still insist upon calling "the Father of Waters—the largest river in North America." Its current was about one-third faster than that of its tributary, the Ohio. Its banks were covered with heavy forests, and for miles along its course the great wilderness was broken only by the half-tilled lands of the cotton- planter.

From Cairo southward the river is very tortuous, turning back upon itself as if imitating the convolutions of a crawling serpent, and following a channel of more than eleven hundred and fifty miles before its waters unite with those of the Gulf of Mexico. This country between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico is truly the delta of the Mississippi, for the river north of Cairo cuts through table-lands, and is confined to its old bed; but below the mouth of the Ohio the great river persistently seeks for new channels, and, as we approach New Orleans, we discover branches which carry off a considerable portion of its water to the Gulf coast in southwestern Louisiana.

It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for the study of physical geography has not been developed among my countrymen. Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported chair of physical geography occupied by an American? We sometimes hear of a "Professor of Geology and Physical Geography," but the last is only a sort of appendage—a tail—to the former. When a student of American geography begins the study in earnest, he discovers that our geographies are insufficient, are filled with errors, and that our maps possess a greater number of inaccuracies than truths. When he goes into the field to study the physical geography of his native land, he is forced to go through the disagreeable process of unlearning all he has been taught from the poor textbooks of stay-at- home travellers and closet students, whose compilations have burdened his mind with errors. In despair he turns to the topographical charts and maps of the "United States Coast and Geodetic Survey," and of the "Engineer Corps of the United States Army," and in the truthful and interesting results of the practical labors of trained observers he takes courage as he enters anew his field of study. The cartographer of the shop economically constructs his unreliable maps to supply a cheap demand; and strange to say, though the results of the government surveys are freely at his disposal, he rarely makes use of them. It costs too much to alter the old map-plates, and but few persons will feel sufficiently interested to criticise the faults of his latest edition.

"How do you get the interior details?" I once asked the agent of one of the largest map establishments in the United States. "Oh," he answered, "when we cannot get township details from local surveys, we sling them in anyhow." An error once taught from our geographies and maps will remain an error for a generation, and our text-book geographers will continue to repeat it, for they do not travel over the countries they describe, and rarely adopt the results of scientific investigation. The most unpopular study in the schools of the United States is that of the geography of our country. It does not amount merely to a feeling of indifference, but in some colleges to a positive prejudice. The chief mountain-climbing club of America, counting among its members some of the best minds of our day, was confronted by this very prejudice. "If you introduce the study of physical geography in connection with the explorations of mountains, I will not join your association," said a gentleman living almost within the shadow of the buildings of our oldest university.

A committee of Chinese who called upon the school authorities of a Pacific-coast city, several years since, respectfully petitioned that "you will not waste the time of our children in teaching them geography. You say the world is ROUND; some of us say it is FLAT. What difference does it make to our business if it be round or flat? The study of geography will not help us to make money. It may do for Melican man, but it is not good for Chinese."

I once knew a chairman of the school trustees in a town in New Jersey to remove his daughters from the public school simply because the teacher insisted that it was his duty to instruct his pupils in the study of geography. "My boys may go to sea some day, and then geography may be of service to them," said this chairman to the teacher, "but if my daughters study it they will waste their time. Of what use can geography be to girls who will never command a vessel?"

While conscious that I may inflict an uninteresting chapter upon my reader who may have accompanied me with a commendable degree of patience so far upon my lonely voyage, I nevertheless feel it a duty to place on record a few facts that are well known to scientific men, if not to the writers of popular geographies, regarding the existence within the boundaries of our own country of the longest river in the world. It is time that the recognition of this fact should be established in every school in the United States. As this is a very important subject, let us examine it in detail.

THE MISSOURI IS THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD, AND THE MISSISSIPPI IS ONLY A BRANCH OF IT. The Mississippi River joins its current with that of the Missouri about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio; consequently, as we are now to allow the largest stream (the Missouri) to bear its name from its source all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, it follows that the Ohio flows into the Missouri and not into the Mississippi River. The Missouri, and NOT the Mississippi, is the main stream of what has been called the Mississippi Basin. The Missouri, when taken from its fountain-heads of the Gallatin, Madison, and Red Rock lakes, or, if we take the Jefferson Fork as the principal tributary, has a length, from its source to its union with the Mississippi, of above three thousand miles. The United States Topographical Engineers have credited it with a length of two thousand nine hundred and eight miles, when divested of some of these tributary extensions. The same good authority gives the Mississippi a length of thirteen hundred and thirty miles from its source to its junction with the Missouri.

At this junction of the two rivers the Missouri has a mean discharge of one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second, or one-seventh greater than that of the Mississippi, which has a mean discharge of one hundred and five thousand cubic feet per second. The Missouri drains five hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of territory, while the Mississippi drains only one hundred and sixty- nine thousand square miles. While the latter river has by far the greatest rainfall, the Missouri discharges the largest amount of water, and at the point of union of the two streams is from fifteen to seventeen hundred miles the longer of the two. Therefore, according to natural laws, the Missouri is the main stream, and the smaller and shorter Mississippi is only a branch of it. From the junction of the two rivers the current, increased by numerous tributaries, follows a crooked channel some thirteen hundred and fifty-five miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri, therefore, has a total length of four thousand three hundred and sixty-three miles, without counting some of its highest sources.

The learned Professor A. Guyot, in a treatise on physical geography, written for "A. J. Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas of the World," informs us that the Amazon River, the great drainer of the eastern Andes, is three thousand five hundred and fifty miles long, and is the LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.