Climate, Soil, and Productions.—In so wide an extent a very great diversity of climate must necessarily exist. From the considerable elevation of some parts, northern position of others, and the open exposure of nearly the whole extent, the winters are extremely severe. The whole of the valley, a small part of the south-eastern extremity excepted, has an aspect and climate with a striking resemblance to the steppes of central Asia ; and, like those steppes, must for ever be thinly peopled.
With the exception of the alluvial banks of the streams, the soil is, as far as correct information has been obtain ed, dry and sterile, which, added to the want of timber, and in many places of great extent, water, settlement of an agricultural people is rendered not only difficult but impossible.
The state of Missouri, embracing about 63,000 square miles, it is probable, if the advantages of climate are superadded to soil, possesses one fourth part of the productive surface of this entire valley.
Of the indigenous vegetables of the Missouri valley little can be said. Mr. Bradbury was the only naturalist of sufficient skill to investigate the subject of its botany, who ever reached the interior of the valley, as far as the Mandan villages, and his opportunities of observation were so limited as to preclude extensive research.
Of the timber trees and exotic plants, we will have an opportunity to speak under the article, State of Missouri, (which see.) It is probable that the mineral treasures of this exten sive valley may in some measure compensate for its many other disadvantages. Of the quantity of iron ore and mineral coal laid open to the day along the banks of Missouri, Mr. Bradbury expresses himself in raptures. So small a part has been examined, and that so hastily, even by Mr. Bradbury himself, that no conclusive de ductions can he made on any branch of the natural history of the valley of Missouri, at present.
Valley of the Mississippi, below the mouth of the Mis souri.—We now approach what may be strictly desig nated as the tropical regions of the United States, though the entire surface of the section under review is not in cluded under that government. The common recipient, the Mississippi, has been noticed under the head of that river in general ; we may therefore observe, that the section under review extends in its greatest length from the mouth of the Mississippi to the sources of the Ar kansaw, 1400 miles: the greatest width of the valley is, from the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri to the mouth of the Atchafalaya, 600 miles. The area of no section of the Mississippi basin can be determined with more difficulty than that under review. The sources and length of the two most considerable confluents re main uncertain to a very serious extent. In this article we have assumed 330,000 square miles, equal to 211,200,000 acres.
In respect to climate, the lower valley of the Missis sippi extends from N. Lat. 29°, that of the mouth of the Mississippi, to N. Lat. 42°, the sources of Arkansaw river, or through 13 degrees of latitude, with a differ ence of elevation from the level of the Gulf of Mexico to at least 5000 feet. These extremes, when due allow
ance is made for difference of elevation, amount to 28 degrees of latitude.
The principal confluents of this valley, which enter the main recipient from the right, are, commencing be low the mouth of Missouri, Merrimack, St. Francis, White, Arkansaw. and Red river ; those from the left are, commencing below the mouth of Ohio, Kaskampa, Redloot, Obian, Chickisaw, Forked Deer, Yazoo, Big Black. nomochitto, and Buffalo rivers.
k'eatures.—The lower valley of the Mississippi is the most diversified section of the United States. Every variety of landscape, every trait of natural physiognomy, and an exhaustless source of metallic and vegetable pro duction, is here found. This expanse is limited on the cast by a dense forest, and on the west by the lofty but naked spines of the Chippewan mountains.
After receding about 100 miles from the banks of the Mississippi to the west, and in many places a less dis tance, prairies commence, which, gradually encroaching on the forests, finally spread one wide waste of grass, as on the higher branches of the general basin. The open plains of Arkansaw and Red rivers, are merely a con tinuation of those of the valley of Missouri, and with similar features. Those immeasurable plains of grass seem destined to be, in all future, as they have been in all former ages, the empire of ruminant animals, such as the buffaloc, deer, wild goat, or antelope, and wild sheep. Following this apparent law of nature, if those prairies should ever become the residence of civilized inhabitants—those inhabitants must be herdsmen, and not cultivators of the earth. As far as settlements have been made on one side of this grassy desert by the Spa nish Americans, and on the other by the people of the United States, in western Louisiana and elsewhere, ef fects have followed natural causes,and the traveller finds a tude habitation on the banks of a brook or river, with a small field or two, in which a little maize and sweet po tatoes are cultivated ; and from thence the eye ranges over a shoreless sea of grass, on which cattle and horses are seen grazing in all directions. This is not the fiction of a sportive imagination ; it is a reality which the eye that directs the pen that records the fact path seen innu merable times. And it is here noted as illustrative of how much man is influenced in his modes of existence, his manners, and political condition, by the soil, climate, and other natural phenomena around him ; and to the operations of which, as he cannot control, must submit. And such is the flexibility of human nature, that what was necessity becomes by habit pleasure, and the mount ed herdsmen of New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansaw, would not change condition with any other people on earth. Free as the plains on which they rove are wide, these horsemen know no luxury beyond their herds, sigh for no distinction but that of managing their steeds with most adroitness.