be extracted to-day; but then it wouldn’t pay for the washing. Quite
a different set of traditions deals with the Covenanting period. Far
up in the solitary side glens were favourite meeting-places; here the
saints came from far and near with Bible, and sword and gun, ready to
offer up their lives if need may be, but quite determined to sell them
as dearly as possible. Alas! the minstrels were not on their side,
and no contemporary ballads tell the story of the dangers and deaths,
though those were dramatic enough. In later times Hogg and Wilson did
something to weave them into song and story. It was near the loch of
the Lowes that Renwick preached his last sermon. “When he prayed that
day few of his hearers’ cheeks were dry.” On the 17th February, 1688,
“he glorified God in the grass-market,” as the old phrase ran.
And now one can understand how Yarrow came to its fame. Quieter,
sweeter, softer than other vales, its green braes, its delicious
streams attracted the old singers who preserved the memories of others’
deeds. But why is this music sad? Well, most border ballads are little
tragedies, the strongest emotions are the saddest, and such the singers
preferred. And then one or two ballads gave a decided tone to the
others. The “Dowie Dens,” in fact, strikes the key-note of them all.
William Hamilton, of Bangour, and John Logan have both told a story of
love and death in excellent fashion in their poems on “The Braes of
Yarrow.” As for the rest, Scott is chiefly descriptive; Wordsworth, in
spite of an occasional line or even verse of high excellence, is on the
whole very poor; and Alan Ramsay is exceedingly bad.
THE MISSISSIPPI
ALEXANDER D. ANDERSON
In the early days of European discoveries and rivalries in the
Mississippi Valley its comprehensive river system played a prominent
part on the stage of public affairs. The discovery of the river, in
1541, by De Soto and his Spanish troops, was about a century later
followed by explorations by the French under the lead of Marquette,
Joliet, La Salle and others, who entered the valley from the north.
La Salle, during the years 1679-83, explored the river throughout
its whole length, took possession of the great valley in the name of
France, and called it Louisiana in honour of his King, Louis XIV. Then
resulted grand schemes for developing the resources of the valley,
which a French writer characterized as “the regions watered by the
Mississippi, immense unknown virgin solitudes which the imagination
filled with riches.” One Crozat, in 1712, secured from the King a
charter giving him almost imperial control of the commerce of the
whole Mississippi Valley. There was at that date no European rival to
dispute French domination, for the English of New England and the other
Atlantic colonies had not extended their settlements westward across
the Alleghanies, and the Spanish inhabitants of New Spain or Mexico
had not pushed their conquest farther north than New Mexico. Crozat’s
trading privileges covered an area many times as large as all France,
and as fertile as any on the face of the earth. But he was equal to
the opportunity, and, failing in his efforts, soon surrendered the
charter.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY THE
MISSISSIPPI]
John Law, a Scotchman, at first a gambler, and subsequently a bold,
visionary, but brilliant financier, succeeded Crozat in the privileges
of this grand scheme, and secured from the successor of Louis XIV. a
monopoly of the trade and development of the French possessions in
the valley. In order to carry out his wild enterprise he organized
a colossal stock company, called “The Western Company,” but more
generally known in history as the “Mississippi Bubble.” According to
the historian Monette “it was vested with the exclusive privilege of
the entire commerce of Louisiana and New France, and with authority
to enforce its rights. It was authorized to monopolize the trade of
all the colonies in the provinces, and of all the Indian tribes within
the limits of that extensive region, even to the remotest source of
every stream tributary in anywise to the Mississippi.” So skilful and
daring were his manipulations that he bewitched the French people with
the fascinations of stock gambling. The excitement in Paris is thus
described by Thiers:
“It was no longer the professional speculators and creditors of the
Government who frequented the rue Quincampoix; all classes of society
mingled there, cherishing the same illusions--noblemen famous on the
field of battle, distinguished in the Government, churchmen, traders,
quiet citizens, and servants whom their suddenly acquired fortune had
filled with the hope of rivalling their masters.”
The rue Quincampoix was called the Mississippi. The month of December
was the time of the greatest infatuation. The shares ended by rising
to eighteen and twenty thousand francs--thirty-six and forty times the
first price. At the price which they had attained, the six hundred
thousand shares represented a capital of ten or twelve billions of
francs.
But the bubble soon burst; and its explosion upset the finances of
this whole kingdom. Some years later, in 1745, a French engineer named
Deverges made a report to his Government in favour of improving the
mouth of the Mississippi, and stated that the bars there existing were
a serious injury to commerce.
But France met with too powerful rivalry in the valley, and in 1762
and 1763, after a supremacy of nearly a hundred years, was crowded out
by the English from the Atlantic colonies and the Spaniards from the
south-west, the Mississippi River forming the dividing line between
the regions acquired by those two nations. The Spanish officials, for
the purpose of promoting colonization, and to aid in establishing
trading-posts on the Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Red, and
other rivers in the western half of the valley, granted to certain
individuals, pioneers, and settlers, large tracts of land. They made
little progress, however, in peopling their new territory.
But whatever progress was made under the successive supremacies of
France and Spain, the Mississippi and its navigable tributaries
supplied the only highways of communication and commerce.
In the year 1800, soon after Napoleon I. became the civil ruler of
France, he sought to add to the commercial glory of his country by
re-acquiring the territory resting upon the Mississippi which his
predecessors had parted with in 1763.
To quote the language of a French historian: “The cession that France
made of Louisiana to Spain in 1763 had been considered in all our
maritime and commercial cities as impolitic and injurious to the
interests of our navigation, as well as to the French West Indies,
and it was very generally wished that an opportunity might occur of
recovering that colony. One of the first cares of Bonaparte was to
renew with the court of Madrid a negotiation on that subject.”
He succeeded in these negotiations, and by secret treaty of St.
Ildefonso, in 1800, French domination was once more established over
the great river.
Two years later, the commerce of the river had grown to large
proportions. Says Marbois, of that period: “No rivers of Europe are
more frequented than the Mississippi and tributaries.” A substantially
correct idea of their patronage may be obtained from the record of the
foreign commerce from the mouth of the Mississippi, for nearly all of
the commodities collected there for export had first floated down the
river.
Marbois well illustrates the intense indignation at this order on
the part of the Western people by attributing to them the following
language: “The Mississippi is ours by the law of nature; it belongs to
us by our numbers, and by the labour which we have bestowed on those
spots which before our arrival were desert and barren. Our innumerable
rivers swell it and flow with it into the Gulf Sea. Its mouth is the
only issue which nature has given to our waters, and we wish to use it
for our vessels. No power in the world shall deprive us of this right.”
Of Morales’s order James Madison, then Secretary of State, wrote the
official representative of the United States at the court of Spain:
“You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens to such an
occurrence. This sensibility is justified by the interest they have at
stake. The Mississippi to them is everything. It is the Hudson, the
Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic
States formed into one stream.”
At this time Thomas Jefferson was President, and in view of the
uneasiness of the Western settlers, he hastened to send to France a
special ambassador to negotiate for the purchase of the Louisiana
Territory. The opportunity was a favourable one, for France was then
in danger of a conflict with Great Britain. The latter country had
become alarmed at and jealous of Bonaparte’s commercial conquests, and
he, apprehending war and fearing that he could not hold Louisiana, had
about determined to do the next best thing--dispose of it to one of
England’s rivals.
Marbois, the historian of Louisiana, from whom we have above quoted,
was chosen by Napoleon to represent France in the negotiations with the
representative of the United States sent by Jefferson. His account of
the cession--the consultation between Napoleon and his ministers--and
of his remarks and motives, forms one of the most instructive and
interesting chapters of modern history. Napoleon foreshadowed his
action by the following remark to one of his counsellors:
“To emancipate nations from the commercial tyranny of England it is
necessary to balance her influence by a maritime power that may one day
become her rival; that power is the United States. The English aspire
to dispose of all the riches of the world. I shall be useful to the
whole universe if I can prevent their ruling America as they rule Asia.”
In a subsequent conversation with two of his ministers, on the 10th
of April, 1803, on the subject of the proposed cession, he said in
speaking of England: “They shall not have the Mississippi which they
covet.”
In accordance with this conclusion, on the 30th day of the same
month, the sale was made to the United States. When informed that
his instructions had been carried out and the treaty consummated, he
remarked:
“This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the
United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that
will sooner or later humble her pride.”
Under the stimulating influence of American enterprise the commerce
of the valley rapidly developed. In 1812 it entered upon a new era of
progress by the introduction for the first time upon the waters of the
Mississippi of steam transportation.
The river trade then grew from year to year, until the total domestic
exports of its sole outlet at the sea-board--the port of New
Orleans--had during the fiscal year 1855-56 reached the value of over
$80,000,000. Its prestige was then eclipsed by railways, the first
line reaching the Upper Mississippi in 1854, and the second the Lower
Mississippi, at St. Louis in 1857. Says Poor:
“The line first opened in this state from Chicago to the Mississippi
was the Chicago and Rock Island, completed in February, 1854. The
completion of this road extended the railway system of the country
to the Mississippi, up to this time the great route of commerce of
the interior. This work, in connection with the numerous other lines
since opened, has almost wholly diverted this commerce from what may
be termed its natural to artificial channels, so that no considerable
portion of it now flowed down the river to New Orleans.”
The correctness of this assertion may be seen by reference to the
statistics of the total domestic exports of New Orleans during the year
ending June 30, 1879. They were $63,794,000 in value, or $16,000,000
less than in 1856, when the rivalry with railways began.
But since 1879 the river has entered upon a new and important era. The
successful completion of the jetties by Capt. Jas. B. Eads inaugurated
a new era of river commerce and regained for it some of its lost
prestige.
Another step of great importance to the welfare of the Mississippi was
taken about this time. The control of its improvement was transferred
by Congress to a board of skilled engineers known as the Mississippi
River Commission. The various conflicting theories of improvement which
have for years past done much to defeat the grand consummation desired
will now be adjusted in a scientific and business-like manner.
Again, the rapidly growing popular demand throughout the United
States for more intimate commercial relations with Mexico and the
several sister nations of Central and South America, which lie
opposite the mouth of this great River System, is stimulating the
long-neglected longitude trade and thereby creating a new demand for
new transportation on the longitudinal water-ways which comprise the
Mississippi and its tributaries.
The Mississippi and tributaries considered as a drainage system, extend
nearly the whole length of the United States from Canada to the Gulf,
and across more than half its width, or from the summit of the Rocky
Mountains to that of the Alleghanies.
Steamers can now transport freight in unbroken bulk from St. Anthony’s
Falls to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 2,161 miles, and from
Pittsburg to Fort Benton, Mont., 4,333 miles. Lighter craft can ascend
the Missouri to Great Falls, near where that river leaves the Rocky
Mountains.
THE ZAMBESI
HENRY DRUMMOND
Zambesi, the most important river on the East Coast of Africa, and the
fourth largest on the continent, drains during its course of about
1,200 miles an area of 600,000 square miles. Its head-streams, which
have not yet been fully explored, are the Leeambye, or Iambaji, rising
in Cazembe’s country; the Lungebungo, which descends from the Mossamba
Mountains; and the Leeba River, from the marshy Lake Dilolo (4,740
feet), situated between 10° and 12° south latitude and 22° and 23°
east longitude. These three rivers, reinforced by the Nhengo, unite to
form the upper Zambesi (Leeambye), which flows at first southwards and
slightly eastwards through the Barotse valley, then turns prominently
to the east near its junction with the Chobe (Chuando or Linianti),
and passes over the Victoria Falls. Thence, as the middle reach of the
Zambesi, the river sweeps north-east towards Zumbo and the Kebrabassa
rapids above Tete, and finally forms the lower Zambesi, which curves
southwards until it reaches the Indian Ocean at 18° 50′ south latitude.
Fed chiefly from the highland country which stretches from Lake Nyassa
to inner Angola, its chief tributaries are the Loängwa and the Shiré,
the last an important river draining out of Lake Nyassa, and which
in the dry season contains probably as great a volume of water as
the Zambesi, and is much more navigable. Except for an interruption
of seventy miles at the Murchison cataracts, the Shiré is open
throughout its entire length to the lake.
[Illustration: THE ZAMBESI]
On the whole the Zambesi has a gentle current, and flows through a
succession of wide fertile valleys and richly wooded plains; but, owing
to the terrace-like structure of the continent, the course of the river
is interrupted from point to point by cataracts and rapids. These form
serious, and in some cases insurmountable, hindrances to navigation.
Those on the lower Zambesi begin with its delta. The bar here was long
held to be impassable, except to vessels of the shallowest draught, but
the difficulty was exaggerated partly through ignorance and partly in
the interests of the Portuguese settlement of Quilimane, which, before
the merits of the Kongone entrance were understood, had been already
established on the Qua-qua River, sixty miles to the north. The Zambesi
is now known to have four mouths, the Milambe to the west, the Kongone,
the Leeabo, and the Timbwe. The best of these, the Kongone, has altered
and the channel improved recently. There are at least eighteen feet of
water on the bar at high water neap tides; and steamers drawing fifteen
feet, and sailing vessels drawing three feet less, have no difficulty
in entering. The deep water continues only a short distance, and,
after Mazaro (sixty miles) is reached, where the river has already
dwindled to the breadth of a mile, the channel is open in the dry
season as far as Senna (120 miles from the mouth) for vessels drawing
four and one-half feet. Up to this point navigation could only be
successfully and continuously carried on by vessels of much lighter
draught--stern-wheelers for preference with a draught of little more
than eighteen inches. About ninety miles from Senna the river enters
the Lupata gorge, the impetuous current contracting between walls to
a width of scarcely 200 yards. Passing Tete (240 miles from the mouth
with a smooth course) the channel becomes dangerous at Kebrabassa,
ninety miles further on. From the Kebrabassa rapids upwards, and past
the Victoria Falls, there are occasional stretches of navigable water
extending for considerable distances, while the upper Zambesi with its
confluents and their tributaries forms a really fine and extensive
waterway. Like the Nile, the Zambesi is visited by annual inundations,
during which the whole country is flooded and many of the minor falls
and rapids are then obliterated.
The chief physical feature of the Zambesi is the Mosi-oa-tunya (“smoke
sounds there”) or Victoria Falls, admitted to be one of the noblest
waterfalls in the world. The cataract is bounded on three sides by
ridges 300 or 400 feet high, and these, along with many islands dotted
over the stream, are covered with sylvan vegetation. The falls,
according to Livingstone, are caused by a stupendous crack or rent,
with sharp and almost unbroken edges, stretching right across the
river in the hard black basalt which here forms the bed. The cleft is
360 feet in sheer depth and close upon a mile in length. Into this
chasm, or more than twice the depth of Niagara, the river rolls with a
deafening roar, sending up vast columns of spray, which are visible for
a distance of twenty miles. Unlike Niagara, the Mosi-oa-tunya does not
terminate in an open gorge, the river immediately below the fall being
blocked at eighty yards by the opposing side of the (supposed) cleft
running parallel to the precipice which forms the waterfall. The only
outlet is a narrow channel cut in this barrier at a point 1,170 yards
from the western end of the chasm and some 600 from its eastern, and
through this the Zambesi, now only twenty or thirty yards wide, pours
for 120 yards before emerging into the enormous zigzag trough which
conducts the river past the basalt plateau.
The region drained by the Zambesi may be represented as a vast
broken-edged plateau 3,000 or 4,000 feet high, composed in the remote
interior of metamorphic beds and fringed with the igneous rocks of the
Victoria Falls. At Shupanga, on the lower Zambesi, thin strata of grey
and yellow sandstone, with an occasional band of limestone, crop out on
the bed of the river in the dry season, and these persist beyond Tete,
where they are associated with extensive seams of coal. Gold is also
known to occur in several places.
The higher regions of the Zambesi have only been visited by one or
two explorers; and the lower, though nominally in possession of the
Portuguese since the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, are also
comparatively little known. The Barotse valley, or valley of the upper
Zambesi, is a vast pastoral plain, 3,300 feet above sea-level, about
189 miles in length and thirty to thirty-five broad. Though inundated
in the rainy season, it is covered with villages and supports countless
herds of cattle. The Luiwas who inhabit it are clothed with skins,
work neatly in ivory, and live upon milk, maize, and sweet potatoes.
In the neighbourhood of the falls the tsetse fly abounds; and the
Batoka people who live there, and who are the only arboriculturists
in the country, live upon the products of their gardens. Zumbo, on
the north bank, and Chicova, opposite on the southern side (500 miles
above the delta), were the farthest inland of the Portuguese East
African settlements, and are well placed for commerce with the natives.
Founded by Pereira, a native of Goa, these settlements were ultimately
allowed to go to ruins; but Zumbo has been recently reoccupied. The
once celebrated gold mines of Parda Pemba are in the vicinity. The
only other Portuguese settlements on the Zambesi are Tete and Senna.
Tete, formerly a large and important place, now nearly in ruins, still
possesses a fort and several good tiled stone and mud houses. Thither
Portuguese goods, chiefly wines and provisions, are carried by means
of canoes. The exports, which include ivory, gold dust, wheat, and
ground-nuts, are limited owing to the difficulty of transport; but this
difficulty is not insurmountable, for Tete has been twice visited by
some small steam vessels. Senna, further down the river, a neglected
and unhealthy village, has suffered much from political mismanagement,
and has ceaseless troubles with the Landeens or Zulus, who own the
southern bank of the river, and collect in force every year to exact a
heavy tribute-money. The industrial possibilities of the lower Zambesi,
and indeed of the whole river system, are enormous. India-rubber,
indigo, archil, beeswax, and columbo root are plentiful, and oil-seeds
and sugar-cane could be produced in sufficient quantity to supply the
whole of Europe.
The Zambesi region was known to the mediæval geographers as the empire
of Monomotapa, and the course of the river, as well as the position
of Lakes N’gami and Nyassa, was filled in with a rude approximation
to accuracy in the earlier maps. These were probably constructed from
Arab information. The first European to visit the upper Zambesi was
Livingstone in his exploration from Bechuanaland between 1851 and 1853.
Two or three years later he descended the Zambesi to its mouth and in
the course of this journey discovered the Victoria Falls. In 1859,
accompanied by Dr. Kirk (now Sir John Kirk), Livingstone ascended
the river as far as the falls, after tracing the course of its main
tributary, the Shiré, and discovering Lake Nyassa. The mouths of the
Zambesi were long claimed exclusively by the Portuguese, but in 1888
the British Government opened negotiations with Portugal to have the
river declared free to all nations.
THE URUGUAY
ERNEST WILLIAM WHITE
The River Uruguay, a health-giving stream impregnated with
sarsaparilla, and the lesser of the two affluents which swell into the
mighty La Plata, possesses charms for the traveller, denied to the
greater, the Paraná, at least in the lower part of its course; the
water is clearer, the range not so vast, the scenery more varied and
picturesque, whilst the traces of industry are more patent and the
difficulties and dangers of its navigation add a piquancy unknown to
the sister waters.
As its shores were to me as yet an unknown region, I determined to
spend a fortnight in becoming familiar with their beauties, so on the
morning of the 25th of December, in the midst of a glorious summer
season, a friend joined me in taking return tickets from Buenos Ayres
to Concordia, Entre Rios, which at the then state of the tide, was the
furthest point upwards that a steamer could reach.
During breakfast we pretty well lose sight of the Argentine coast
and have nothing before us but a broad freshwater ocean covered
with innumerable blue-flowered camelotes, consisting chiefly of
_Pontederia_, which spread their broad leaves as sails to speed them on
their course; these nesine fragments descend the Paraná but are unknown
on the bosom of the Uruguay. On our right side soon rises a long low
ridge of sand indicating the Banda Oriental coast, terminating opposite
the island of Martin Garcia, in cliffs resembling those of loved
Albion. Calm as the Thames at London bridge is all this mighty estuary;
it is not always so however, but on this holy day of peace
“The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the waters kissed!”