THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI by George Cary Eggleston

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 4, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 49.

THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI.

By George Cary Eggleston

[George Cary Eggleston, in Thrice-a-week World.]

How MANY know that there is no river system on earth which even distantly compares with that of the Mississippi and its tributaries?

The census tells us that these rivers, all flowing through one channel into the Gulf of Mexico, aggregate more than 100,000 miles in length. The Amazon, the Nile, the Ganges and all the rest of the great river systems on earth put together scarcely approach this magnificent showing.

Think of it! A steamboat leaving Pittsburg can visit twenty-three States without passing through any artificial channel. She can go up the Allegheny and Monongahela, the Big Sandy, the Kentucky, the Wabash, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland—clear into Alabama—before reaching the mouth of the Ohio.

Below Cairo she can traverse not only the Mississippi but the St. Francois, the Arkansas, the White, the Red, the Yazoo, the Tallahachee, the Yalobusha, the Ouachita, the great bayous, and all the tributaries of these streams.

Above Cairo lie the Upper Mississippi, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Platte, the Big Horn and a score of tributaries to all these. The suppositious steamboat can land at 1,050 towns and cities on her way.

These rivers drain an area of 1,683,303 square miles, occupied by a population of 24,298,332 in 1890.

The commerce of this great river system was carried on in 1889 by 7,453 vessels, with an aggregate tonnage of 3,393,379 and a value of $15,535,005.

And so rich is that commerce that its annual gross earnings exceed the total value of the craft engaged in it by nearly a million dollars. It carries nearly eleven million passengers and nearly thirty-three million tons of freight per year.

And this is only one of the great river systems of our country—one of many that include such mighty systems as that of the Yukon, that of the Columbia,

that of the Colorado, and that of the Alabama at Tombigbee. It is worth while to remember also that the resources of this marvelous country are far less than half developed.