HISTORICAL.
Nearly three and a half centuries have elapsed since De Soto, that prince among explorers, traversed the broad prairies that lie between the border highlands of the Western continent, and beheld the stream which watered the future empire of the world. His chroniclers tell us that he was raised to an upright position, so that he could catch a fleeting glimpse of the restless, turbulent flood; for even then the hand of death was upon him, and soon its waters were to enshroud his mortal remains. "His soldiers," says Bancroft, "pronounced his eulogy by grieving for their loss, and the priests chanted over his body the first requiems ever heard on the Mississippi. To conceal his death, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and, in the stillness of midnight, was silently sunk in the middle of the stream." Just across the river the Arkansas was pouring in its tumultuous flood, and its confluence was the site of the future town of Napoleon, which in coming years was to be historic ground.
Worn by suffering, hardships and peril, and racked by the pestilential fever that still hovers about the river lowlands, De Soto paid the debt of nature, and his thrice decimated followers made their way back to France. It seemed a strange, incredible story that they told, for such a mighty river, with its vast plain, was beyond conception. Its source, they said, was in the north—among the eternal snows—farther than it had ever been given to man to penetrate. Its waters, they thought, were poured into the Gulf of California, or perhaps into the great Virginia Sea. Its flood, they said, was so great that if all the rivers of Europe were gathered into one channel, they would not be a tithe as large. But the people who heard these wonderful accounts were unconcerned. The French monarch knew naught but to debauch his heritance; the French courtier intrigued and plundered; the French peasant, dogged and sullen in his long suffering, dragged out his miserable existence. The flood of waters rolled on, and a hundred and thirty years must come and go before the next white man should see the sheen of its rippling.
Let us cast a retrograde glance to the history of this period. It was only fifty years before that Columbus had dropped anchor off the coral reef of Samana Cay, and thrilled the Old World by announcing the discovery of the New. Elizabeth, the virgin Queen of England, was a proud, haughty girl just entering her teens, all unmindful of her eventful future. Mary Queen of the Scots was a tiny infant in swaddling clothes. The labors of Rafael Sanzio were still fresh in the memory of his surviving pupils. Michael Angelo was in the zenith of his fame, bending his energies to the beautifying of the great cathedral. Martin Luther was in the sere old age of his life, waiting for the command of the Master, which should bid him lay down his armor. A hundred years were to elapse before Charles I. of England must pay with his life the price of his folly.
Joliet, a French trader, was a man possessed of far more brains than marked the average men of his times. He had not only the indomitable courage which is essential to the successful explorer, but he had also the rare ability to manage men; and we find him in 1672 with a commission from the French king directing him to explore the valley which was to be a part of New France. The lands which he visited must be his fee to the king; certain rights of trade he wisely secured to himself. So, with Pere Marquette, a Jesuit priest, he undertook the mission, which we may doubt whether to call a journey of discovery or an errand of diplomacy. Crossing the ocean, their route lay along the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes; through the Great Lakes to the country of the Illini; down the Illinois to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to its junction with the Arkansas. Here they encamped near the site of Napoleon. Everywhere along their route they had won the hearts of the savage Illini. They possessed that rare tact which was born in French travelers, and which no English explorer ever had. When they had reached the junction of the Arkansas, "they were kindly received by the Indian tribes." They held a council with the various chiefs, with whom they made a treaty. The treaty was celebrated by a feast, and, if we may believe the record thereof, libations of wine were freely poured forth to pledge the stipulations of the business transaction. For a heavenly possession in the uncertain future, the Indian acknowledged, by the cross raised in commemoration, that he had bartered away his earthly kingdom. The title by which the Indian held the soil wrested from the Mound-builder may not have been perfect; that of the wily Joliet may have been equally defective. But Joliet builded more wisely than he knew, for to this day, fraud, treachery and broken faith are the chief witnesses to our treaties with the aboriginal owners of the land.
Nine years after the business venture of Joliet, La Salle received letters extraordinary from the King of France, directing him to make additional explorations along the course of the great river. He organized an expedition, crossed the ocean, and made his way rapidly to the scene of his explorations. Preparing his canoes and launches, he followed the sinuous course of the river to Napoleon. His arrival was celebrated by another feast and post-prandial business agreement, and New France began its brief existence. Never in the history of the world had such an empire been founded—such another could not be formed until the domains of this had been widened from sea to sea, and the energy of Saxon, Teuton and Kelt mingled to build a greater.
To La Salle belongs the honor of tracing the true course of the Mississippi river. He charted it with a faithfulness and accuracy that would do credit to the surveys of the present day. He seemed to have noted all the important feeders and tributaries, correctly locating their points of confluence. He did not cease his work until he reached the Gulf of Mexico.[3] So not only was La Salle the most indefatigable explorer of this region, but he also earned the credit of having made the most important discovery.
With La Salle's exploration the future importance of the Mississippi began; and though the railway has of late years largely supplanted it as a commercial highway, yet, with the possible exception of the Ganges, no other river in the world transports yearly a greater tonnage of merchandise. The early traders were content to carry their supplies back and forth in canoes. As settlement and business increased, the canoe gave place to the raft, and the raft yielded to the flatboat. In the course of time, steam was applied to the propulsion of boats, and the flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when the civil war cast its blight over the land; and when the years of strife were over, so also was the river traffic which had created the floating palaces of the Mississippi. There were several things that operated to prevent the reorganization of the fleet of steamboats which for size, beauty and capacity were found in no other part of the world. Many of these boats had been destroyed, and the companies that owned them were financially ruined. Most of those remaining were purchased or confiscated for military purposes, and rebuilt either as transports or as gunboats. A period of unparalleled railway construction began at the close of the war, and most of the traffic was turned to the railway. Finally, it was discovered that a puffy, wheezy tug, with its train of barges, costing but a few thousand dollars, and equipped with half a score of men, could, at a much less rate, tow a vastly greater cargo than the river steamer. That discovery was the knell of the old-time steamboat, and the beginning of a new era of navigation. Powerful as the railway may be, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a tug and train of barges will carry a cargo of merchandise from St. Paul to St. Louis for one-tenth the sum the consignee must pay for railway transportation. So, to-day, the river is just as important as a highway of commerce as it was in the palmy days of the floating palace and river greyhound. Railway traffic has enormously increased, but river traffic along the most wonderful of streams has not materially lessened.
The Mississippi is certainly a wonderful river. From Elk Lake to the Gulf of Mexico it has a variable length of about 2,800 miles; from Pass à l'Outre to the head of the Missouri its extent is nearly 4,200 miles—a length not equaled by any other river in the world. It is evident, by a moment of reflection, that a river which traverses a great extent of latitude offers much greater facilities for commerce and settlement than a longitudinal river. The Mississippi traverses a greater breadth of latitude than any other river, except the Nile, for its sources are in regions of almost arctic cold, while its delta is in a land that is practically tropical. The volume of its flood is surpassed by the Amazon and, perhaps, the Yukon. It discharges, however, three times as much water as the Danube, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and almost three hundred and fifty times as much as the Thames. It has several hundred navigable tributaries, and its navigable waters, stretched in a straight line, would reach nearly three-fourths the distance around the earth. It is one of the most sinuous of rivers. In one part of its course it flows in a channel nearly 1,400 miles long to accomplish, as the crow flies, the distance of 700 miles. In more than one place the current forms a loop ten, twenty and even thirty miles around, rather than to cut through a neck perhaps not half a mile in width. It is one of the most capricious of rivers, for its channel rarely lies in the same place during two successive seasons. The river manifests a strong inclination to move east; and were La Salle to repeat his memorable voyage, he would touch in scarcely half a score of places the course he formerly traveled; or if he were to go over exactly the same course, he must of necessity have his boats dragged over the ground, for almost the entire course over which he traveled is now dry land. Since that time the river has deserted almost all of its former channel, as if to repudiate its connection with the after-dinner treaties of two hundred years lang syne; in places its channel lies to the west, but for the greater extent it is to the eastward.[4]