The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, (this stream
and its adjuncts involve a big part of the question,) comprehends more
than twelve hundred thousand square miles, the greater part prairies. It
is by far the most important stream on the globe, and would seem to have
been marked out by design, slow-flowing from north to south, through
a dozen climates, all fitted for man's healthy occupancy, its outlet
unfrozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheap continental
avenue for commerce and passage from the north temperate to the torrid
zone. Not even the mighty Amazon (though larger in volume) on its line
of east and west--not the Nile in Africa, nor the Danube in Europe, nor
the three great rivers of China, compare with it. Only the Mediterranean
sea has play'd some such part in history, and all through the past,
as the Mississippi is destined to play in the future. By its demesnes,
water'd and welded by its branches, the Missouri, the Ohio, the
Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, the St. Francis and others, it already
compacts twenty-five millions of people, not merely the most peaceful
and money-making, but the most restless and warlike on earth. Its
valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating the political power of the
American Union. One almost thinks it _is_ the Union--or soon will be.
Take it out, with its radiations, and what would be left? From the car
windows through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, or stopping some days along
the Topeka and Santa Fe road, in southern Kansas, and indeed wherever
I went, hundreds and thousands of miles through this region, my eyes
feasted on primitive and rich meadows, some of them partially inhabited,
but far, immensely far more untouch'd, unbroken--and much of it more
lovely and fertile in its unplough'd innocence than the fair and
valuable fields of New York's, Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's
richest farms.