The following are the distances from the farthest sources on the main stem to the chief landmarks on its course, and the mean-water elevations above sea-level at the end of the reaches: The *source" of a great river is often a term of little import, as its waters may gather from the drainage of a large district; but taking it in its current sense, of the ultimate reservoir of its farthest extension, the Missis sippi rises in the basin draining into Itasca Lake (q.v.) in northern Minnesota. Into the west arm flows from the heights, through a couple of small ponds, a stream of considerable power and fullness, called by its discoverer !Cleollet the *Infant Mississippi,* and now confirmed as such so far as there is one ultimate stream; and out of it, from the north arm, flows the Mississippi. Nicolett in 1836 found it 16 feet wide and 14 inches deep at the outlet. Government Commissioner J. V. Brower in 1893 found it 50 feet wide and three or four feet deep in mid-channel, with a muddy bottom and a current of about two miles an hour. As the current increases it narrows to some 30 feet; is filled with debris, shoals and boulders; and for some distance down the stream free passage with canoes is impeded by reeds, flag and water grass. It continues northward with slight falls and rapids to Lac Travers or Bemidji, about 10 miles long by 4 feet wide, set in a basin surrounded by forested hills and with a beach of perfectly white sand. Thence it issues on the east, and for 25 miles southeastwardly brawls over a series of rapids, from whose foot it flows in a clear even stream 120 feet wide and four or five deep to Cass Lake, twice as large as Bemidji; thence on the east six miles to Winnibigoshish, still larger, whence it issues again on the east 172 feet wide, and as before grows narrower, deeper and of swifter current as it drains the marshes and meadows below. Just above the junction with Leech River, the outlet of the noble Leech Lake, the largest in this region-25 by 15 miles —it strikes a bed of sandstone with a fall of 20 feet in one-sixth of a mile, and is ruffled into rapids called the Falls of Pokegama, in a channel 80 feet wide. This is about 130 miles from the source; small steamers run to the foot of the rapids. Thence it runs crookedly with a general south trend, about 120 feet wide, through hardwood forests, swamps and sand hills, covered with glacial gravel and boulder drift. From the entrance of Swan River to that of the outlet of Sandy Lake there are six rapids; the latter lake has a small stream run ning from a small pond to the eastward, not far from Saint Louis River, emptying into Lake Superior at Duluth, and forms the old canoe route from Minnesota to the Great Lakes. Thence to the entrance of Pine River, about 150 miles from the Pokegama Falls, it has numerous rapids and is broad enough to en close several islands; it receives several smaller tributaries; and the powerful Crow Wing River, 47 miles below Pine River, also fed from a district of lakes, contributes almost as much volume to the joint stream as the Mississippi itself. At the Sauk Rapids, a mile long, 133 miles below the Crow Wing and at the en trance of Sauk River, begin the first rocky banks of Potsdam sandstone, extending down to Rock Island.
At the Falls of Saint Anthony, 80 miles below, the river descends about 65 feet in fourths of a mile, forming rapids interrupted in the middle by a precipice 18 feet high, over which the river, now 1,200 feet wide, formerly plumed in a cataract of great beauty and fame. An island divided it into two channels, the western being the larger. Here the water power has been used to build up the immense manufacturing interests of Minneapolis. Thir teen miles below a convenient landing has established Saint Paul as the head of continu ous navigation for large steamers arfti made it the great wholesale distributing point for the Northwest, and onward the valley is richly fertile, very beautiful and often of much gran deur. Below Saint Paul the river widens into the island-studded *Lake' Pepin. From Daven
port, Iowa, 943 miles from the source, to Rock Island, 14 miles below, there are rapids of 22 feet fall, formerly obstructing the navigation; the government has now cut a channel in the solid rock. The formation of the bed is pecu liar; it consists of stratified limestone, crushed into folds which form a series of six or seven parallel bars across the channel, one to three miles apart. From this point onward the for mation is carboniferous and the banks rise into picturesque rocky bluffs sometimes 300 feet high, as far down as nearly to the begin ning of the alluvial region, 140 miles below Saint Louis. At the mouth of the Des Moines River, 130 miles below Rock Island, is another rapid of 24 feet fall, now avoided by a ship canal; and between Muscatine and Keokuk is one 12 miles long, with 23 feet descent. Nearly 200 miles below Keokuk the first great change comes to the river. Into this clear placid stream is poured a swift, muddy, red torrent, at high water of far greater volume than its own, that of the enormous Missouri, creating tur bulent eddies, and for many miles flowing side by side with the white northern stream without mixing of waters. The bends and winds of the river, making the current cross from side to side, finally mingling them within 100 or 150 miles. Not quite 200 miles farther on comes in the mighty Ohio, with a volume over two thirds as great as that of the other two united.
But 30 miles above here and three miles above the great geological landmark of Cape Girardeau, Mo., begins a still greater change: the vast northern upland, mainly elevated rock with a moderate soil covering it, which has been drained by the river, ceases. The remain ing 1,100 miles of its valley is the creation of its own silt, through which it meanders in deep curves and loops and narrow horseshoes, shift ing its channel capriciously, continually build ing up one side and cutting away the other, but rarely twice the same side. Cape Gi rardeau is an ancient headland of an ancient ocean, into which the silt-laden river poured its deposits as the present river does into the Gulf, and which has receded, leaving more than 1,000 miles of the garden of the world. And the relation of the river to its bottoms is re versed also. From the Falls of Saint Anthony to the end of the uplands are deep strips of bottom land overflowed at high water; but except at such periods they are above the river. But in the lower bottoms made by the river itself, the surface of the latter is normally above that of the bordering lands. The friction of the current on the sides and bottom causes the water held back to keep depositing fresh layers of the heavier sediment on the edges and in the channel; so that as the depth of water remains the same and the channel continually shallows, the surface of the water must rise and would at last empty itself did not the same process elevate its retaining walls. The river therefore runs in a groove, cut into a ridge considerably above the surrounding country, its surface much higher and its bed much lower than the region for many miles back; it slopes away with a gradient at first of about seven feet to the mile, decreasing regularly to the outer edges of the flood plain — which at the Ohio is about 10 miles wide and 50 to 70 in lower Louisiana, widening to 150 at the Delta — and ending at about six inches per mile in the swamps and bayous at the outer edge. The natural method of discharging the waters at flood seasons is to overflow the banks and flood the adjacent country, part of the waters flow ing off through semi-river channels (bayous) in the soft earth, the rest remaining in pools and swamps and gradually evaporating; and the attempt to keep it in the same channel which suffices for low water, to comport with the needs of civilized occupancy, has produced an excessively costly battle with nature, of which the success is by no means yet assured or assurable.