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Show 264 Early Western Trawls [ Vol. 26 waters are charged, impart to it a natural sublimity far more striking, at first view, than that of the Mississippi. This circumstance was not unobserved by the Indian tribes, who appropriately named it the " Smoky Water? 9 by others it was styled the " Mad River," on account of the impetuosity of its current; and in all dialects it is called the " Mother of Floods," indicative of the immense volume of its waters. Various causes have been assigned for the turbid character of the Missouri: and though, doubtless, heavily charged by the volumes of sand thrown into its channel by the Yellow Stone - its longest tributary, equal to the Ohio - and by the chalky day of the White River, yet we are told that it is characterized by the same phenomenon from its very source. At the gates of the Rocky Mountains, where, having torn [ 251] for itself a channel through the everlasting hills, it comes rushing out through the vast prairie- plains at their base, it is the same dark, wQd torrent as at its turbid embouchure. And, strange to tell, after roaming thousands of miles, and receiving into its bosom streams equal to itself, and hundreds of lesser, though powerful tributaries, it still retains, unaltered, in depth or breadth, that volume which at last it rolls into its mighty rival! Torrent after torrent, river after river, pour in their floods, yet [ the giant stream rolls majestically onward unchanged! At the village of St Charles its depth and breadth is the same as at the Mandan villages, nearly two thousand miles nearer its source. 1* 4 The same inexplicable phenomenon characterizes the Mississippi, and, indeed, all the great rivers of the West; for inexplicable the circumstance yet remains, however plausible the theories alleged in explanation. With regard to the Missouri, it is urged that the porous, sandy m For an account of St Charles, see Bradbury's Travels, in our volume •> p. 39, note 9. For the Mandan villages, see Maximilian's Travels, in our volume xxii, p. 344, and note 316, and volume zxiii, p. 334, note 19a.- ED. |