On the first of several agreeable visits to Carbondale in southern Illinois, whither I went to address the best of all audiences—public school teachers—I enquired of the superintendent, Mr. Black, as to the precise distance that separated us from the Mississippi river. I told him I loved all rivers, and this one particularly. I had seen it at St. Paul, at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. I wished to see it far from the noise, smoke and artificiality of cities. I wished to see it naked. He informed me that he was the proud owner of an open Ford car, that the Father of Waters was only eighteen miles away, and that he would lead me to it that very afternoon.
It was a charming day in early spring. I stood on the bank of the mighty Mississippi. There was no town, settlement, not even a house in sight. The glorious old river at this point was one mile wide, fifty feet deep, and running seven miles an hour. Away up stream on the Missouri side the trees were in the living green of April; and the flood came rolling along in silent majesty.
I thought of the old seventeenth century poet, Denham, and what he said of another river.
Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.
Every river has a fascination for me, because it is alive. In a green landscape, or in a rocky gorge, or in the midst of a forest, or dividing a city, it gives to every scene the element of life. Living waters flowing through meadows, over sands, between mountains are always moving, progressing, going somewhere. If one climbs a hill, and looks off on a vast expanse of fresh woods and pastures new, and suddenly sees a river, the heart leaps up with recognition.
Looking at a map—the expressive face of the world—I have often wished to follow the course of various rivers. I should like to go down the Amazon, the Yukon, and the Yangtze. Each river has a personality. Most rivers that empty into the ocean are tidal; their current is pushed backward by the incoming sea. But the Amazon is so mighty that it overcomes the force of the tide and transforms the ocean into fresh water. Unless voyagers and novelists are abandoned liars, one can be off the coast of South America, out of sight of land and dip up fresh water, so tremendous and far-reaching is the shove of the Amazon. Its mouth is so wide that one could place in it crosswise, the whole Hudson river from New York to Albany, without touching either shore.
The personality of the Mississippi is striking. In the greatest of all Mark Twain’s contributions to literature, the first volume of Life on the Mississippi, he gives us marvellous impressions of the character and behaviour of the stream. And in one of the foremost novels of our time, Charles Stewart’s Partners of Providence, the peculiar habits and whims of the Mississippi are set forth. It quite rightly regards itself as socially superior to the Missouri; so much so, in fact, that for some time after the entrance of the Missouri into its waters, the Mississippi positively refuses to have anything to do with the interloper.