DESCRIPTION or• NATURAL FEATURES. The sources of the river are in Lakes Elk. Itasca, Bemidji. Cass, Winnibigashish, Fishing, Leech, and .3lud. lying among hills of drift and boulders, in the midst of pine forests and marshes. From Lake Itasca to Bemidji the stream is about 12 feet wide and 2 feet deep. It issues from the latter 120 feet wide, flowing to Cass Lake, which it leaves with a width of 172 feet, contracting and deepening below as it flows tlu•ough marshes till it comes to a junction with Leech River. when. it has rapids Of 20 feet, called the Falls of Pokegania, 270 miles from the source. '1•o this point small steamers navigate. The total de sc•eut to this point is 324 feet. Thence to the mouth of Crow Wing River. 247 miles, the river falls about one foot per mile. It is narrow through this distance and winds through oak and maple forests, marshes. and sandy hills, where the formation of rock is overlaid with the gravel and fumblers of the drift period. Below, the river passes throiodi a prairie eountry down to Elk River. and is stained slightly nith the color given by piney and marshy vege talion: 133 miles below the ('row Wing :n•e the Sauk Rapids. one mile long, where Potsdam 'sandstone first outcrops on its hanks and extends from that point down to Dubuque and Reek Island. The Falls of Saint Anthony at Minne apolis are IS feet high. with a breadth of 1200. Up to this point the river is navigable for com mercial purposes, though practically Saint Paul is the head of navigation. The river widens below Saint Paul into what is called Lake Pepin, studded with islands. From the Falls of Saint Anthony to the junction with the Missouri, near Saint Louis, the river flows through a valley of great. beauty and uniform fertility. Cliffs and rocky bluffs, from 200 to 300 feet high, give a picturesque character to that part of the valley below Rock Island. where it strikes the Carboniferous strata. the geological formation of the valley, to about 100 miles below the Missouri. At Rock Island, 381 miles below Minneapolis. there is a small fall, but the river is navigable between the right bank and the island 3 miles long with the aid of a canal con structed by the Government. Similar improve ments have been made at the rapids near the mouth of the Des Moines River. so that the navigation of the Upper Mississippi is uninter rupted below the Falls of Saint Anthony. The surging, muddy. eddying waters of the Missouri, for a long distance, flow side by side with the clearer waters of the Mississippi. joining but not blending, till thrown together by many a crook and turn and eddy between the bluffs of the great valley. Before the Ohio River joins them, the union is complete: but the waters remain turbid to their junction with the sea, and. where joined
by the currents of the 'Arkansas and Red rivers, take a more reddish color.
From the Falls of Saint Anthony downward level flood plains or bottom lands begin to appear adjacent to the river on one or both sides, be coming gradually lower as we proceed down the stream. This vast flood plain lies from 300 to 500 feet below the surface of the bordering up lands. Above Cape Girardeau. Mo., 30 miles above the mouth of the Ohio, these flood plains are still clearly above the level of the river. though they are sometimes subject to inundations. These bottom lands, both high and low, are of the highest order of fertility. those farthest north being used for c•ereal.s. Some of the largest have been reclaimed from liability to overflow by dikes across the water-channels by which they were inundated. Sny Island, in Pike County, so reclaimed. is 40 miles in length. 'The .Ameri can Bottom extends from the month of the Missouri 90 miles down the river on the east side with an average breadth of 6 miles. Ilelow Cape Girardeau, on the west side, the whole country down to the Gulf is bottom land for an average width of 50 miles. But throughout this stretch, from Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio. to the Gulf, the river flows in a ehannel on the summit of a low ridge. the land sloping gradually away from the banks on either side. so that the whole or the greater part of the bottom lands lie below the level of the river sm•faee. Every water-eours? in this bottom land, whether stream or bayou. flows in a similar channel. on a ridge ereated hy its own deposits. The slopes of these ridges are the cultivable lands of this region. The inter vening areas are mainly marshy. and in Louisi ana are entirely marsh, rising but. a few• feet above the I :till level. From Ca irn. III., as fa r south as :Memphis. Tenn., the river impinges on the cast bank. leaving its bottom land on the west side. Theme southward as far as Natchez. Miss., there is a broad extent of bottom land on the east side, known as the Yazoo Bottoms, which are intersected by many bayous, the chief of which is the Yazoo. On the west side is also a wide bottom land, which extends almost con tinnously to the Gulf of Mexico, widening south wa•d. On the east side the river impinges against the bluffs for some distance south of Natchez, but below the boundary between Mis sissippi and Louisiana bottom land appears again on this side of the river and rapidly widens toward the Gulf. The entire valley of the lower section of the river is margined by bayous or arms, which leave the main stream to rejoin it farther down, and considerable parts of Louisi ana, Mississippi, anal Arkansas are intersected by them.