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Show 16 THE CITY OF THE SAINTS. CHAP. I. inclinations, pointing down the stream. From the mouth of the James Biver down to the Mississippi, it is a wonder how a steamer can run: she must lose half her time by laying to at night, and is often delayed for days, as the wind prevents her passing by bends filled with obstructions. The navigation is generally closed by ice at Sioux City on the 10th of November, and at Fort Leavenworth by the 1st of December. The rainy season of the spring and summer commences in the latitude of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Southern Nebraska, between the 15th of May and the 30th of June, and continues about two months. The floods produced by the melting snows in the mountains come from the Platte, the Big Cheyenne, the Yellow Stone, and the Upper Missouri, reaching the lower river about the 1st of July, and lasting a month. Bivers like this, whose navigation depends upon temporary floods, are greatly inferior for ascent than for descent. The length of the inundation much depends upon the snow on the mountains: a steamer starting from St. Louis on the first indication of the rise would not generally reach the Yellow Stone before low water at the latter point, and if a miscalculation is made by taking the temporary rise for the real inundation, the boat must lay by in the middle of the river till the water deepens. Some geographers have proposed to transfer to the Missouri, on account of its superior length, the honor of being the real head of the Mississippi; they neglect, however, to consider the direction and the course of the stream, an element which must enter largely in determining the channels of great rivers. It will, I hope, be long before this great ditch wins the day from the glorious Father of Waters. The reader will find in Appendix No. I. a detailed itinerary, showing him the distances between camping-places, the several mail stations where mules are changed, the hours of travel, and the facilities for obtaining wood and water-in fact, all things required for the novice, hunter, or emigrant. In these pages I shall consider the route rather in its pictorial than in its geographical aspects, and give less of diary than of dissertation upon the subjects which each day's route suggested. Landing in Bleeding Kansas-she still bleeds*-we fell at once into " Emigration Boad," a great thoroughfare, broad and well worn as a European turnpike or a Boman military route, and undoubtedly the best and the longest natural highway in the world. * And no wonder ! " I advise you, one and all, to enter every election district in Kansas and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver. Neither give nor take quarter as our case demands it." " I tell you, mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted with Free-soilism or Abolitionism, and exterminate him. Neither give nor take quarter from them." (Extracts from Speeches of General Stringfellow-happy name!-in the Kansas Legislature.) |
