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.
[Footnote 3: From the best information I can gather I am unable to
decide to my own satisfaction whether or not La Salle discovered
the Red River. It is not improbable that he never saw this stream,
for it is more than likely that at that time, Red River poured its
waters directly into the Gulf of Mexico, through Atchafalaya and
Cocoudrie Bayous. That these were formerly a part of the channel
of Red River, there can be no doubt. The sluggish swale that now
leads from the river to the Gulf is a silted channel that was
formerly large enough to carry the whole volume of Red River. Such
changes in the channel of a river, when the latter flows through
"made" soil, are by no means infrequent. It is only a few years
since the Hoang River, "the sorrow of Han," broke through its
restraining banks, and poured its flood into the Gulf of
Pe-chee-lee, 350 miles distant from its former mouth.]
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]
[Footnote 4: "The bed of the river is so broad that the channel
meanders from side to side within the bed, just as the bed itself
meanders from bluff to bluff; and, as by erosions and deposits, the
river, in long periods of time, traverses the valley, so the channel
traverses the bed from bank to bank, justifying the remark often
heard, that 'not a square rod of the bed could be pointed out that had
not, at some time, been covered by the track of steamboats.'"--J.H.
SIMPSON, _Col. Eng., Brevet Brig.-Gen., U.S.A._]