Yet all this is but an element in the vast system of western waters. It
reaches the Mississippi, but to be swallowed up and engulfed by that
turbid and rapid stream, which, like some gaping, gigantic monster,
running wild from the Rocky Mountains and the Itasca summit, stands
ready to gulp it down. The scene is truly magnificent, and the struggle
not slight. For more than twenty miles, the transparent blue waters of
the Ohio are crowded along the Tennessee coast; but the Mississippi,
swollen by its summer flood, as if disdainful of its rural and
peace-like properties, gains the mastery before reaching Memphis, and
carries its characteristic of turbid geologic power for a thousand miles
more, until its final exit into the Mexican Gulf.
I had never seen such a sight. I had lost all my standards of
comparison. Compared to it, my little home streams would not fill a pint
cup; and, like a man suddenly ushered into a new world, I was amazed at
the scene before me. Mere _amplitude_ of the most ordinary elements of
water and alluvial land has done this.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120