Taken as a whole, Missouri, like most new countries in the United States, has been, as a body of arable land, greatly overrated. As a commercial position, if due allowance is made for its internal situation, the value of this section of our country has never yet been duly ap preciated. The truly astonishing assemblage of rivers, which seem to have sought a common centre of union, would indicate St. Louis, or some other place in its vi cinity, as the future entrepot between widely extended, and far distant portions of our empire. If the pursuits of mankind, and their individual means of subsistence, were exclusively agricultural, Missouri could never, in proportion to territorial extent, possess a population equally dense with New-York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indi ana, or Illinois; but in the complex admixture of em ployment, and the illimitable transmission of the pro ducts of human labour, arising from the improvement of modern manners and arts, population does not depend for its entire subsistence upon the quality of the soil inha bited by any portion of mankind. Commerce and the plastic arts demand, perhaps, as many hands as agricul ture. There is indeed no employment of human labour, avhere so great a surplus is produced as that of agricul ture; and none, in which the industry of a few will so effectually supply the wants of many. It is for this rea son that the density of population must, particularly in such places as Missouri, depend as much, if not more, upon commercial, mining, and manufacturing pursuits, as upon the operations or resources of agriculture. In ad dition to the apparently inexhaustible stores of lead ore, some of the most abundant iron mines in the world exist on the Missouri river, and in the interior of the state. In Washington coubty. Bclvue settlement, in addition to lead, says Mr. Schonlcraft, " in the richness of the ore, and extent of the beds or mines, it is no where paralleled. The most noted place is the iron mountain, where the ore is piled in such enormous masses, as to constitute the entire southern extremity of a lofty ridge, which is elevated 500 or 600 feet above the plain." Water power to work this mass abounds in all directions. It is, however, only one of a number of mines of this really most precious of all metallic bodies, which lie scattered over the sources of St. Francis and Merrimack rivers.
In the same vicinity, and in fact over the entire lead tract, ores of zinc abound, a very important fact in the mineralogy of Missouri. Zinc is, when it can be cheaply procured, one of the most useful metals, answering nearly all the purposes, without the destructive qualities of copper. Zinc has been hitherto considered a scarce ore, and should it be found in large bodies in the Missis sippi basin, will add a very important article to the re sources of that fine region.
The most singular circumstance in the mineralogical history of the interior of North America, is the abun dance and extent of the stores of muriate of soda, com mon salt. Amongst the revolutions effected in the last forty years on the condition of society, there is none more salutary to private convenience than the change in the price of salt in the interior of this continent. We remember, when the supply for west Pennsylvania and west Virginia was procured by transportation from the Atlantic slope. At a period when money was at least 100 per cent. above its present value, salt cost in those places five dollars per bushel, at a minimum price. It is now manufactured in a great variety of places, where the face of the earth gave no indications of its existence.
There is good reason to believe, that at certain depths, the whole basin of the Mississippi is saturated with salt water ; a fact which, combined with the abundant ex istence of limpid fresh water at the surface, is highly consolatory.
Where muriate of soda prevails to such excess, as in some parts of the Spanish internal provinces, the earth becomes uninhabitable, cold, and steril. This is also the case with part of central Asia. In Europe, salt is pro cured generally from the sea, or found in substance in mines, as at Guadaloupe in Spain, and more particularly Wielitzka, near Cracow, in Austrian Poland. In North America, this mineral has not been found in solid imbed ded masses, though no reasonable doubt can be enter tained, but that the bowels of the earth must contain pro digious bodies of that fossil in its crystallized state, in places where it is so very extensively held in solution by water. It may be safely expected, that in some future day, muriate of soda will be quarried in the Mississippi basin, as in Spain and Poland.
Coal has been mentioned amongst the mineral products of Missouri ; but we are unacquainted with any extensive body of that fossil yet brought into use in that state. Mr.
Bradbury speaks with enthusiasm of the enormous strata of both coal and iron, which lines many parts of the banks of Missouri ; but the coal spoken of by this author is ge nerally above the limits of Missouri.
Many other mineral substances of less value have been discovered in Missouri ; but so much of the area of the state remains unsettled, that its mineral and vege table wealth have only commenced their development. From what is known, much may be expected ; few sec tions of the earth, of equal supet ficies, and of so recent civilized colonization, have exhibited so rich a variety of mineral resources as southern Missouri.
This state is in a peculiar degree remarkable, as form ing the connecting link between the forest and meadow or prairie sections of North America. That enormous forest, which we have remarked as covering the entire Atlantic slope, nine-tenths of St. Lawrence basin, all the basins of Appalachicola and Mobile, all the Delta of the Mississippi, and most parts of the left side of its basin, reaches into Missouri, and covers nearly all its southern and south-eastern sections. This great body of woods is indented in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, by a protrusion of the prairies, which expand advancing south-west, and range through Missouti south of Missouri river. On the west border of that state, on the Osage, and near the junction of the Missouri and Kanses rivers, the prairies usurp much the greater share of the surface of the whole country. Lines of woodland follow the streams, leaving the intermediate spaces open plains. Those lines of timbered ground gradually become more attenuated westward, until nearly one unbroken waste spreads over hundreds of miles. The peninsula between Missouri and Mississippi rivers, though not so naked of timber as are the sources of Arkansaw, Kanses, and Platte rivers, yet immense prairies occur on the former region also. Over an extent much more than equal to the inhabited parts of the United States and Canada, the winds of the north, west, and south-west breathe over Missouri, with out much impediment from mountains, hills, or forests. It will be seen in the sequel, that from this exposure arises the peculiar variable and cold climate, which prevails near the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. If clue attention is paid to the physiognomy of the adja cent regions, it will at once be seen, that the surface of Missouri is in a peculiar manner liable to extraneous influence. To the south-west, for upwards of twelve hundred miles, expands a dry salt desert. To the west, as far as known, the extension of the same desert leaves the earth a void. To the north-west, a two-fold cause superinduces a flux of cold air over Missouri. The openness of the immense regions in that direction, and the constant volumes of cold, and often frozen water, brought down by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. It is from these combined causes that such excessive changes are felt, and inequalities of seasons experienced, to extremes scarcely known in any other spot on this planet. It is from this complicated climate, that in N. Lat. 3S° 30', the rivers are frozen, four years in five, be fore the end of December. Another phenomenon has been observed in Missouri, which in a striking manner dis tinguishes its seasons from those of Louisiana or the At lantic slope ; that is, the much less moisture in the at mosphere of the former. Though frosts are so rigorous at St. Louis as to render the Mississippi passable on the ice before the beginning of January in ordinary seasons, yet deep snow or drenching rains are uncommon. The air is commonly dry, cold, and elastic. In reality, the position of Missouri, Arkansaw, and Louisiana, are all singularly worthy of philosophic attention. A dense forest covers all the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, and those of its confluents. On the east side of that vast recipient, we have seen this forest only terminated by the Atlantic ocean. On the west, it is followed by the prai ries or desert we have noticed. Moisture is as remark ably abundant in the forest tracts, as it is wanting in that of the prairies. The natural consequence of the position of places, on the confines of two regions whose meteoro logical constitutions are so essentially different, is an exposure to the extremes of both, following the current of air. This is, in an extraordinary degree, the case with Louisiana, where two successive seasons may differ so much, as one to present an almost constant deluge of rain, and the other scarcely affording a single shower. Ascending the Mississippi, the quantity of rain becomes less in a given time, at least as far north as 45°.