America, Volume 6 (of 6)
by Joel Cook · English · Gutenberg #42872 · 518,668 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: America, Volume 6 (of 6)
Author: Joel Cook
Release date: June 4, 2013 [eBook #42872]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA, VOLUME 6 (OF 6) ***
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
This book was printed in a 6-volume set and a 3-volume set. Although
this e-book was from the 6-volume set, the title page refers
to "Vol. III." The index references are to the 3-volume set.
FROM THE OHIO TO THE GULF.
VOL. III.
[Illustration: _Pack Train on the Skaguay Trail, Alaska_]
_EDITION ARTISTIQUE_
The World's Famous
Places and Peoples
AMERICA
BY
JOEL COOK
In Six Volumes
Volume VI.
MERRILL AND BAKER
New York London
THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS
LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS
COPY IS NO. ____
Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VI
PAGE
PACK TRAIN ON THE SKAGUAY TRAIL, ALASKA _Frontispiece_
TYLER-DAVIDSON FOUNTAIN, CINCINNATI, OHIO 332
BRIDGE CROSSING THE MISSISSIPPI AT ST. LOUIS 396
CLOISTER OF MISSION, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO 442
GATEWAY, GARDEN OF THE GODS, COLORADO 466
SITKA, ALASKA, FROM THE SEA 500
XIX.
FROM THE OHIO TO THE GULF.
The Ohio River -- Economy -- The Harmonists -- Columbiana --
Wheeling -- Moundsville -- Marietta -- Parkersburg --
Blennerhassett's Island -- Point Pleasant -- Maysville --
Blue Grass -- Lexington -- Cincinnati -- Covington --
Newport -- Dayton -- North Bend -- Carrolton -- Frankfort --
Kentucky River -- Daniel Boone -- Louisville --
Jeffersonville -- Bowling Green -- Mammoth Cave -- Nashville
-- Battle of Nashville -- Evansville -- Cairo -- Cumberland
River -- Tennessee River -- Forts Henry and Donelson --
Battle of Shiloh -- Cumberland Mountains -- Cumberland Gap
-- Mount Mitchell -- Chattanooga -- Missionary Ridge --
Lookout Mountain -- Chickamauga Park -- The Chickamauga
Battles -- Rosecrans against Bragg -- Battle Above the
Clouds -- Grant Defeats Bragg -- Knoxville -- Parson
Brownlow -- Greenville -- Andrew Johnson -- Roan Mountain --
Land of the Sky -- Swannanoa River -- Buncombe -- Asheville
-- Biltmore -- Hickory-Nut Gap -- French Broad River -- Hot
Springs -- Spartansburg -- Cowpens -- King's Mountain --
Charlotte -- Mecklenburg -- Salisbury Prison -- Guilford
Court House -- Chapel Hill -- Durham -- Raleigh -- Columbia
-- Aiken -- Augusta -- Chattahoochee River -- Atlanta -- Its
Siege and Capture -- Sherman's March to the Sea -- Rome --
Anniston -- Talladega -- Birmingham -- Tuscaloosa -- Macon
-- Andersonville Prison -- Columbus -- West Point --
Tuskegee -- Alabama River -- Montgomery -- Cotton
Plantations -- Selma -- Meridian -- Jackson -- Tombigbee
River -- Mobile and Its Bay -- Admiral Farragut -- Capture
of Mobile Forts -- The Pine and the Orange.
THE OHIO RIVER.
The Ohio--the Indian "stream white with froth," the French _La Belle
Riviere_--is the greatest river draining the western slopes of the
Alleghenies. Its basin embraces over two hundred thousand square
miles, and it flows for a thousand miles from Pittsburg to the
Mississippi at Cairo. In the upper reaches the Ohio is about twelve
hundred feet wide, broadening below to twenty-four hundred feet, its
depth varying fifty to sixty feet in the stages between low and high
water, and it goes along with smooth and placid current at one to
three miles an hour, having no fall excepting a rocky rapid of
twenty-six feet descent in two miles at Louisville. From Pittsburg it
flows northwest about twenty-six miles at the bottom of a deep canyon
it has carved down in the table land, so that steep and lofty hills
enclose it. Then the river turns west and finally south around the
long and narrow "Panhandle" protruding northward from the State of
West Virginia. It passes through a thriving agricultural region, with
many prosperous cities on its banks, almost everyone having a great
railway bridge carrying over the many lines seeking the west and
south. In its whole course it descends some four hundred feet; its
scenery is largely pastoral and gentle, without the grandeur given by
bold cliffs, although much of the shores are beautiful, and its banks
in various places disclose elevated terraces, indicating that it
formerly flowed at much higher levels, whilst its winding route gives
a constant succession of curves that add to the attractiveness.
Eighteen miles from Pittsburg is the town of Economy, where are the
fine farms and oil-wells of the quaint community of "Harmonists."
Georg Rapp, of Wurtumberg, believing he was divinely called to restore
the Christian religion to its original purity, established a colony
there on the model of the primitive church, with goods held in common,
which in 1803 he transplanted to Pennsylvania, settling in Butler
County. A few years later they removed to Indiana, but soon came back,
and founded their settlement of Economy in Beaver County in 1824.
Originally they numbered six hundred, and grew very rich, but being
celibates, their community dwindled until there were only eighteen,
who owned a tract of twenty-five hundred acres with valuable buildings
and much personal property, so that if divided it was estimated each
would have more than $100,000. The baby "Harmonist" then was over
sixty years old, and to perpetuate the community, in 1888 they began
accepting proselytes, who assumed all the obligations with vows of
celibacy, and thus the number was increased to fifty. Economy is a
sleepy village, its vine-covered houses built with gables towards the
street and without front doors, all being entered from side-yards.
They now labor but little themselves, their factories are silent, and
their noted brand of Pennsylvania "Economy whiskey" is no longer
distilled. Their church-bell rings them up at five o'clock in the
morning, they breakfast at six, and at seven the bell again rings for
the farmhands to go to work. At nine the bell summons them to lunch,
at twelve to dinner, at three to lunch again, at six to supper, and at
nine in the evening it finally warns the village to go to bed. They
have a noted wine-cellar, and none drink water, but they give all the
hands wine and cider, and present cake and wine to every visitor. At
the church service, the men sit on one side and the women on the
other, and when a "Harmonist" dies he is wrapped in a winding-sheet
and buried in the "white graveyard," no tombstone marking the grave.
They have recently suffered from litigation, others trying to get a
share of their wealth, but they live quietly, awaiting the final
summons, firm in their faith, and thoroughly believing its cardinal
principle that their last survivor will see the end of the world.
GOING DOWN THE OHIO.
Having crossed the Pennsylvania western boundary, the Ohio River
separates West Virginia from the State of Ohio, passing a region which
seems mournful from the many abandoned oil-derricks displayed near the
banks for a long distance. The Ohio shore is Columbiana County, a name
fancifully compounded by an early State Legislature from "Columbus"
and "Anna;" and it is recorded that when the subject was pending one
member proposed to add "Maria," so that the euphonious whole would be
"Columbianamaria." His effort failed, however. At the various towns,
the railroads come out from the mountain regions of West Virginia,
bringing the bituminous coal for shipment. Ninety-four miles below
Pittsburg is Wheeling, the metropolis of West Virginia, a busy
manufacturing city of forty thousand people. Farther down, in the
midst of the flats adjoining the river, at Moundsville, is the great
Indian Mound, a relic of the prehistoric inhabitants of this region
standing up eighty feet high and being eight hundred and twenty feet
in circumference at the base. In this mound were found two sepulchral
chambers containing three skeletons. At Benwood, near by, one branch
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the river to Bellaire in
Ohio. The Muskingum River, coming out of the heart of the State, flows
in at Marietta, a stream thus named by the Delaware Indians when they
first came to this region, from the abundance of elk and deer who
could be approached near enough to see their eyes, Muskingum meaning
"elk's eyes." Marietta is the oldest town in Ohio, settled in 1788 by
a colony sent out by the "Ohio Company" of New England, which had been
granted many square miles of land along the river. This colony of
forty-seven Yankee pioneers marched over the Alleghenies, floated down
the Ohio on a flatboat which they called the "Mayflower," and landing
at the mouth of the Muskingum, their first act was writing a set of
laws and nailing them to a tree, and in this code naming their
settlement in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. A
company of troops in a little stockade fort protected them from the
Indians. Here they found a curious mass of ancient fortifications,
relics of the prehistoric mound-builders--a square enclosed by a wall
of earth ten feet high, having twelve entrances, a covered way,
bulwarks to defend the gateways, and other elaborate works, including
a moat fifteen feet wide defended by a parapet. Thirteen miles below,
the Little Kanawha River flows in at Parkersburg, and here the other
branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses on a massive bridge,
a mile and a half long, over the river and lowlands. This is the
entrepot of a great petroleum district which gives the town a large
trade, and they are said to be still striking in the Ritchie County
oilfield thousand-barrel wells. In the river two miles below is the
noted Blennerhassett's Island, where that gentleman, an Irishman of
distinction, built himself a splendid mansion and made a fine estate
in 1798. When Aaron Burr afterwards concocted his notorious
conspiracy, he induced Blennerhassett to invest his fortune in the
scheme. Whilst not convicted of treason, Burr's dupe was irretrievably
ruined and his house and estate fell into decay.
The Great Kanawha flows in, the chief river of West Virginia, at Point
Pleasant, the Indian "rapid river," and it is now the outlet of one of
the leading coal-fields, the New River district, in its upper waters,
the navigation being maintained by an elaborate system of locks and
movable dams. At the mouth was fought the severest battle with the
Indians in the Ohio Valley, the tribes from beyond the river attacking
the troops, but being beaten off after great bloodshed. Huntington is
beyond, where the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway comes out to the Ohio,
after having passed Charleston, the West Virginia State capital, fifty
miles up the Kanawha. The Big Sandy River enters below, the boundary
of Kentucky, and beyond is the mouth of the Scioto on the Ohio bank,
where the terminus of the Lake Erie and Ohio Canal gave the start to
the city of Portsmouth, having twenty thousand people. Maysville, to
the westward on the Kentucky shore, is a leading hemp-market, and one
of the towns supplying the famous "Blue Grass Region." The river banks
here are very attractive and are backed by ranges of hills. Stretching
southward from the shores are extensive green parks, with few fences
and only occasional green fields, displaying majestic trees, one of
the best grazing districts in America, the wealth of the inhabitants
being in their flocks. Some distance back from the river the blue
grass begins, so named from its blue tinge when in blossom, the
district occupying ten thousand square miles in five Kentucky
counties, the soil being very rich and the extensive pastures lined by
hemp and tobacco fields. Stock farms abound, and Lexington is the
metropolis of the district, a thriving town of twenty-five thousand
people, about eighty miles south of the Ohio, an important horse and
cattle market, and also famous for its distilleries of the native
Bourbon whiskies. Here is the noted race-track of the "Kentucky
Horse-Breeders' Association," and in this district are raised the
greatest racing horses of America. Probably the leading stock farm is
at Ashland, a short distance out of town, where Henry Clay long had
his home. Lexington received its name from having been founded in 1775
about the time of the battle of Lexington. It has a fine monument to
Henry Clay, who died in 1852, and it is also the seat of the
University of Kentucky, with eight hundred students.
THE CITY OF CINCINNATI.
Sixty miles below Maysville the Licking River flows out of Kentucky,
and on the opposite Ohio shore, built upon the magnificent
amphitheatre of hills rising tier upon tier, and surrounded by
villa-crowned heights elevated five hundred feet as a background, is
Ohio's metropolis, Cincinnati, the Queen City. It spreads fourteen
miles along the river, one of the most important manufacturing and
commercial centres of the West, and is fronted by Covington and
Newport on the Kentucky shore, the Licking River dividing them. John
Cleves Symmes, a prominent American in the eighteenth century, bought
from the Government after the Revolution a large tract of land in Ohio
between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, known as "Symmes'
Purchase." His nephew and namesake was the noted author of the "Theory
of Concentric Spheres," which was called in derision "Symmes's Hole,"
and he afterwards died on this tract, being buried there with a
monument surmounted, according to his pet theory, by a globe open at
the poles. The people interested in the land purchase decided to
establish a settlement opposite the mouth of the Licking, and they
gave it the pedantic name of Losantiville, a word ingeniously
contrived to describe its position by using the "L" signifying Licking
River, "os" the mouth, "anti" opposite, and "ville" a city. General
St. Clair, however, came along afterwards to establish a military post
in his campaign against the Indians, and being prominently identified
with the Society of the Cincinnati, he gave the place that name. It
was for many years a small collection of log cabins, and had only slow
growth until steamboating began on the Ohio, when it rapidly expanded,
receiving an additional impetus from the opening of the Miami Canal
connecting with Lake Erie in 1830 and from the great development of
the western railway systems after 1840. Its earlier inhabitants came
largely from the Atlantic States and Kentucky, but subsequently there
was a great German influx, so that a considerable district north of
the Miami Canal is their special home, and is familiarly known as
"Over the Rhine." The Civil War gave the city a serious set-back by
destroying its extensive Southern trade, but it has since greatly
grown, and now has a population of four hundred thousand. The
immediate advantage of location comes from having around it a district
of a hundred miles radius which is one of the most fertile in America.
The Fountain Square at Fifth Street may be regarded as the business
centre of Cincinnati, this being an expansion of the street, having
upon a spacious esplanade the grand bronze Tyler-Davidson Fountain,
the gift of a prominent townsman, which was cast at the Royal Bronze
Foundry in Munich and is one of the noblest fountains existing. To the
northward is the granite United States Government Building which cost
$5,000,000, while farther inland is the red Romanesque City Hall, with
a lofty tower, erected at an expense of $1,600,000. The high hills
enclosing Cincinnati give grand outlooks, and upon them are the finest
parts of the city. They are reached by inclined-plane railways from
the lower grounds, as well as by winding roadways. Upon these hills to
the eastward is Eden Park, a fine pleasure-ground of over two hundred
acres containing the water reservoirs and an elaborate Art Museum, of
handsome architecture, surmounted by a red-tiled roof. The famous
Rookwood Pottery is also on these eastern hills. To the northward
is Mount Auburn, and beyond, the Clifton Heights with the Burnet
Woods Park, a fine natural forest. These high encircling hills,
diversified by ravines, give to suburban Cincinnati a singularly
picturesque and beautiful environment, being covered by attractive and
costly villas surrounded by lawns and gardens, making throughout a
most delicious park. The Spring Grove Cemetery, about five miles to
the northwest, covers a square mile, and is an appropriate home of the
dead, having elaborate monuments, of which the finest is the Dexter
Mausoleum, a Gothic chapel of grand proportions and splendid
decoration. Five great bridges span the Ohio in front of Cincinnati,
crossing over to the Kentucky shore at Covington and Newport, where
there are seventy thousand people, the United States military post of
Fort Thomas being upon the hills behind Newport. Up the Great Miami,
sixty miles to the northward, and at its confluence with Mad River, is
Dayton, a busy manufacturing and railway centre, having seventy
thousand people. It is the location of the Central National Soldiers'
Home, where there are several thousand old soldiers, the spacious
buildings, in an attractive park of seven hundred acres, standing
prominently on the hills sloping up from the Miami River to the
westward of the city.
[Illustration: Tyler-Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati, O.]
CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE.
North Bend on the Ohio River, fifteen miles from Cincinnati, was the
home of General William Henry Harrison, and upon a commanding hill is
his tomb, a modest structure of brick. The family mansion built in
1814, to which he brought his bride, is still preserved, and in it
were born his son John Scott Harrison and his grandson, President
Benjamin Harrison. To the westward the Great Miami River flows in at
the boundary between Ohio and Indiana. Some distance farther down, at
Carrolton, is the mouth of the Kentucky River, which named the "Blue
Grass State," a beautiful stream, having upon its banks, sixty miles
south of the Ohio, the Kentucky capital, Frankfort. The name of this
river comes from the Iroquois word _Kentake_, meaning "among the
meadows," in allusion to a large and almost treeless tract in the
southern part of the State from which the river flows, called by the
pioneers "the Barrens." To this region first came the famous hunter
Daniel Boone, who had been born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in
1735, but went in early life to North Carolina. In 1769, being of a
roving disposition, he crossed the mountains with five companions and
penetrated the forests of Kentucky, the first white men who trod them.
He was captured by the Indians, but escaped, returning to North
Carolina after wandering and hunting through Kentucky over a year. He
finally moved with some others, all taking their families, into
Kentucky in 1773, settling on the upper Kentucky River, and building a
defensive fort there at Boonesborough in 1775. The Indians repeatedly
attacked the place and were repulsed, but finally, in 1778, they
captured Boone, taking him northward to Detroit. Again he escaped,
returning later in the year, having another combat with the Indians at
his fort and defeating them. For seventeen years afterwards he hunted
in Kentucky, and his name and exploits became a household word; but
there was a large migration into the region from Virginia and
elsewhere, and the increased population was crowding the old hunter
too much, so he went west in 1795 to Missouri, settling beyond St.
Louis. He had received large land grants in both States, and had
various legal conflicts, losing much of his property, but he lived in
Missouri the remainder of his life, dying there on his farm in 1820 at
the age of eighty-five. Being the founder of Kentucky, that State in
1845, as the result of a popular movement, brought back the remains of
the old hunter, and they were interred near Frankfort, alongside the
river he loved so well.
The Ohio River flows westward past Madison, a thriving manufacturing
town on the Indiana bank, and then sweeps around a grand curve to the
south in its approach to the Kentucky metropolis, Louisville. The view
of Louisville and Jeffersonville, opposite in Indiana, is very fine,
as the visitor comes towards them down the river. The Ohio is a mile
wide, and the Kentucky hills which lined it above, here recede from
the bank, and do not come out to it again for twenty miles, leaving
an almost level plain several miles in width, and elevated some
distance above the water, upon which Louisville is built, spreading
along the shore for eight miles in a graceful crescent. The rapids at
the lower end of the city cover the whole width of the river, and go
down twenty-six feet in two miles, making a series of foaming cascades
in ordinary stages of water, but being almost entirely obliterated in
times of freshet, when the steamboats can pass down them. A long canal
cut through the rocks provides safe navigation around them. An
expedition of thirteen families of Virginia, under Colonel George
Rogers Clarke, floated down the Ohio on flatboats in 1778, and halting
at the falls, settled there, at first on an island, but afterwards on
the southern shore. This began the town which in 1780 was named by the
Virginia Legislature in honor of the French King Louis XVI., who was
then actively aiding the American Revolution. The Ohio River
steamboating began the city's rapid growth, which was further swelled
by the later development of railway traffic, and it now has two
hundred and fifty thousand population. There is a large southern trade
in provisions and supplies, and it is probably the greatest
leaf-tobacco market in the world, being also the distributing depot
for the Kentucky whiskies. There are, besides, other prominent
branches of manufacture. Its foliage-lined and lawn-bordered streets
in the residential section are very attractive and a notable feature.
The chief public buildings are the Court House and the City Hall, the
former adorned by a statue of the Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. Its
great disaster was a frightful tornado, which swept a path of
desolation through the heart of the city in March, 1900, killing
seventy-six persons and destroying property estimated at $3,000,000.
Its most famous citizen was George D. Prentice, poet, editor and
politician, whose monument, a Grecian canopy of marble, is in Cave
Hill Cemetery, prettily laid out on the hills to the eastward. The
city has an environment of pleasant parks, and three fine bridges span
the Ohio in front, crossing to the suburban towns of Jeffersonville
and New Albany over on the Indiana shore. Five miles east of
Louisville lived General Zachary Taylor, old "Rough and Ready," who
commanded the army of the United States in the conquest of Mexico, and
died while President in 1850. He is buried near his old home.
LOUISVILLE TO NASHVILLE.
Southward from Louisville runs the railroad to Nashville, and
proceeding along it, Green River is reached, which, flowing northwest,
falls into the Ohio near Evansville. At the Green River crossing were
fought the initial skirmishes of the Civil War, in various conflicts
between the western armies of Generals Buell and Bragg in 1862.
Farther southwestward is Bowling Green, now a quiet agricultural town,
but then a location at the crossing of Barren River of great strategic
importance, it having been occupied and strongly fortified by the
Confederates in 1861, to defend the approach to Nashville. But after
the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in February, 1862, the
Confederates being outflanked abandoned the town, retiring southward.
Between these places, and adjoining Green River, about ninety miles
south of Louisville, is the famous Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. This is
the largest known cavern in the world, extending for a distance of
nine or ten miles, the various avenues that have been explored having
a total length approximating two hundred miles. The carboniferous
limestones of Kentucky, in which the cave is located, occupy an area
of eight thousand square miles, and the geologists estimate that there
are probably a hundred thousand miles of open caverns beneath this
surface. There is a hotel near the cave entrance, and it has several
thousand visitors annually. Its mouth is reached by passing down a
rocky ravine through the forest, and is a sort of funnel-shaped
opening about a hundred feet in diameter at the top, with steep walls
fifty feet high. A hunter accidentally discovered the cave in 1809,
and for years afterwards it was entered chiefly to obtain nitre for
the manufacture of gunpowder, especially during the War of 1812, the
nitre being found in deposits on the cave floor, mainly near the
entrance, and owing its origin to the accumulation of animal remains,
mostly of bats, in which the cave abounds. It subsequently became a
resort for sight-seers, and yields its owners a good revenue.
Upon entering the cave, the first impression is made by a chaos of
limestone formations, moist with water oozing from above, and then is
immediately felt what is known as "the breath" of the cave. It has
pure air and an even temperature of 52° to 56°, and this is maintained
all the year round. In summer the relatively cooler air flows out of
the entrance, while in winter the colder air outside is drawn in, and
this makes the movement of "the breath," at once apparent from the
difference of temperature and currents of wind when passing the
entrance. For nearly a half-mile within are seen the remains of the
Government nitre-works, the vats being undecayed, while ruts of
cart-wheels are traceable on the floor. The Rotunda is then entered, a
hall seventy-five feet high and one hundred and sixty feet across,
beginning the main cave, and out of which avenues lead in various
directions. The vast interior beyond contains a succession of
wonderful avenues, chambers, domes, abysses, grottoes, lakes, rivers,
cataracts, stalactites, etc., remarkable for size and extraordinary
appearance, though they are neither as brilliant nor as beautiful as
similar things seen in some other caves. But their gigantic scale is
elsewhere unsurpassed. There are eyeless fish and crawfish, and a
prolific population of bats. In the subterranean explorations there
are two routes usually followed, a short one of eight miles and
another of twenty miles. Various appropriate names are given the
different parts of the cave, and curious and interesting legends are
told about them, one of the tales being of the "Bridal Chamber," which
got its name because an ingenious maiden who had promised at the
deathbed of her mother she would not marry any man on the face of the
earth, came down here and was wedded. Bayard Taylor wrote of this
Mammoth Cave, "No description can do justice to its sublimity, or
present a fair picture of its manifold wonders; it is the greatest
natural curiosity I have ever visited, Niagara not excepted."
Seventy miles south of Bowling Green, at the Cumberland River, and
occupying the hills adjoining both banks, is Nashville, the capital
and largest city of Tennessee, having eighty thousand population. It
is in an admirable situation, and is known as the "Rock City," its
most prominent building, the State Capitol, standing upon an abrupt
yet symmetrical hill, rising like an Indian mound and overlooking the
entire city, its high tower seen from afar. In the grounds are the
tomb of President James K. Polk, who died in 1849 and whose home was
in Nashville, and a fine bronze equestrian statue of General Andrew
Jackson, the most famous Tennesseean, whose residence, the Hermitage,
was eleven miles to the eastward. Nashville has considerable
manufactures, but is chiefly known as the leading educational city of
the South. The most prominent institution is the Vanderbilt
University, attended by eight hundred students and endowed by
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt with $1,000,000, his colossal statue,
unveiled in 1897, standing on the campus. The University of Nashville,
originally begun by charter of the North Carolina Legislature as an
Academy in 1785, has four hundred students in its Normal Department,
which trains teachers for Southern schools, and as many more in its
Medical Department. There are also the Fisk University, Roger Williams
University, and Central Tennessee College, all endowments for colored
students and having about thirteen hundred in attendance. The city has
various other educational institutions and public buildings, and in
the southwestern suburbs is the famous Belle Meade stock-farm, where
was bred Iroquois, the only American horse that was a winner of the
English Derby. Nashville was in the midst of the Civil War, and four
miles to the northward is a National Cemetery with over sixteen
thousand soldiers' graves. The great battle of Nashville was fought
just south of the city December 15 and 16, 1864. In November of that
year General Sherman had captured Atlanta, Georgia, to the southeast,
and the Confederate General Hood, who had lost it, marched in
Sherman's rear northward and began an invasion of Tennessee, advancing
upon Nashville and forcing General George H. Thomas to fall back
within its fortifications south of the Cumberland. For two weeks
little was done, the weather preventing, but Thomas suddenly attacked,
and in the two days' battle worsted Hood and put his army to flight,
pursuing them over the boundary into Alabama, where the remnants
escaped across the Tennessee River, a demoralized rabble. Hood's army
being thus destroyed, Sherman, who had been waiting at Atlanta, began
his famous march to the sea.
The Ohio River below Louisville passes Evansville, the chief town of
southwestern Indiana, having sixty thousand people and a large trade.
A short distance beyond, the Wabash River flows in, the boundary
between Indiana and Illinois. Shawneetown in southern Illinois and
Paducah in Kentucky are passed, and the Ohio River finally discharges
its waters into the Mississippi at Cairo, the southern extremity of
Illinois, the town being built upon a long, low peninsula protruding
between the two great rivers, around which extensive levees have been
constructed to prevent inundation. The place has about twelve thousand
people and considerable manufacturing industry. All about is an
extensive prairie land, which in times of great spring freshets is
generally overflowed.
CUMBERLAND AND TENNESSEE RIVERS.
A large portion of the waters brought down by the Ohio come from its
two great affluents flowing in almost alongside each other on the
southern bank, just above Paducah, the Cumberland and Tennessee
Rivers. The Cumberland has its sources in the Cumberland Mountains,
the eastern boundary of Kentucky, and flows for six hundred and fifty
miles, the whole length of that State, making a wide, sweeping circuit
down into Tennessee, where it passes Nashville, at the head of
steamboat navigation, two hundred miles from its mouth. For twenty
miles above their mouths, in their lower courses, these two great
rivers are rarely more than three miles apart. The Tennessee is twelve
hundred miles long from its head stream, the Holston River, rising in
the mountains east of Kentucky and Tennessee. It comes through East
Tennessee, makes a great bend down into Alabama, and then coming up
northward flows through Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio. It is
navigable for nearly three hundred miles to the Mussel Shoals at
Florence, Alabama, where canals and locks have improved the navigation
for twenty miles past the shoals, and it can also be navigated for
eight hundred miles above, excepting at very low stages of water. Its
name signifies "the river of the Great Bend," and it was also called
in early times the "river of the Cherokees."
It was by the capture of Fort Donelson, near the mouth of the
Cumberland River, that General Grant gained his early fame in the
Civil War. The Confederates erected strong defensive works on the two
rivers in order to prevent an invasion of Western Kentucky and
Tennessee. The places selected were about forty miles south of the
Ohio--Fort Henry being built on the eastern bank of the Tennessee
River and Fort Donelson on the western bank of the Cumberland, twelve
miles apart, and connected by a direct road. A combined land and naval
attack was made on these forts in February, 1862, under command of
General Grant and Commodore Foote. Fort Henry was easily captured by
Foote's gunboats on February 6th after an hour's action, most of the
garrison retreating across the neck of land to Fort Donelson. Grant
then invested Fort Donelson, being reinforced until he had
twenty-seven thousand men, and he attacked so vigorously that after a
severe battle on the 15th he effected a lodgement in the Confederate
lines and severely crippled them. Part of the garrison escaped
southward during the night, and in the morning General Buckner,
commanding, asked for an armistice and commissioners to arrange a
capitulation. To this Grant made his noted reply, "No terms except
unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted; I propose to
move immediately upon your works." Having no alternative, Buckner
surrendered. The Union army captured fourteen thousand prisoners, a
vast amount of small arms and stores, and sixty-five cannon. Almost
immediately afterwards the Confederates practically abandoned Western
Kentucky and Tennessee, and Grant moved his army up the Tennessee
River, and by the middle of March it was encamped to the westward and
along the banks, near the southern Tennessee border, the lines
extending several miles from Shiloh Church to Pittsburg Landing. The
Confederates under A. S. Johnston and Beauregard were at Corinth,
Mississippi, about twenty miles to the southwest. The Union plan was
that General Buell, who was coming southwestward from Nashville,
should join Grant, and then an advance southward be made. The
Confederates, having learned of the plan, early in April decided to
attack Grant before Buell could join him, and on the morning of the
6th the onslaught began, the Union army being surprised. This was the
great battle of Shiloh, in which the Union forces were pushed back
with heavy loss on the first day. Buell arrived, however, crossing the
Tennessee that night and joining, so that next day, after a stubborn
battle, Grant recovered his position, and the Confederates retreated
to Corinth. In this battle the losses were about twenty-five thousand
killed, wounded and missing, including three thousand Union prisoners
taken.
The Cumberland Mountains, dividing Virginia from Kentucky, and
extending farther southwest to separate East from Middle Tennessee,
are the main watershed between the upper waters and sources of the two
great rivers. This range is an elevated plateau rising about a
thousand feet above the neighboring country and two thousand feet
above the sea, the flat top being in some parts fifty miles across. On
both sides the cliffs are precipitous, being much notched on the
western declivities. Pioneer hunters coming out of Virginia discovered
these mountains and the river in 1748, giving them the name of the
Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, then the prominent military
leader of England. These explorers came through the remarkable notch
cut part way down in the range on the Kentucky-Tennessee boundary,
just at the western extremity of Virginia,--the Cumberland Gap. This
cleft, five hundred feet deep, is in some places only wide enough for
a road, and extends for six miles through the ridge. It was for over a
century the highway from southwestern Virginia into East Tennessee and
southeastern Kentucky, being previously the trail followed by the
Cherokees and other Indians in their movements east and west of the
mountains. Through it came Daniel Boone and his companions from North
Carolina into Kentucky, and the pass naturally became a great
battleground of the Civil War. It is now utilized as the route for a
branch of the Southern Railway from East Tennessee into Kentucky,
traversing the Gap at about sixteen hundred feet elevation. In one
place this road passes through a tunnel of over a half-mile, beginning
in Tennessee, going under the corner of Virginia, and coming out in
Kentucky. Iron is in abundance all about the Gap. During the war it
was fortified by the Confederates, but in June, 1862, they were
compelled to abandon it, and the Union troops took possession, being
in turn forced out the following September. In September, 1863, the
Union armies besieged and captured it, holding the Gap till the end of
the war. The great curiosity of Cumberland Gap was the Pinnacle Rock,
overhanging the narrow pass in a commanding position. This huge rock,
weighing hundreds of tons, fell on Christmas night, 1899, awakening
the village at the Gap as if by an earthquake, though no one was
injured.
CHATTANOOGA AND ITS BATTLES.
The great Allegheny ranges, stretching from northeast to southwest,
attain their highest altitude in western North Carolina. They come
down southwestward out of Virginia in the Blue Ridge and other ranges,
forming a high plateau, having the Blue Ridge on the eastern side, and
on the western, forming the boundary between North Carolina and
Tennessee, the chain known in various parts as the Stony, Iron, Great
Smoky and Unaka Mountains, while beyond, to the northwest, the
Cumberland Mountains extend in a parallel range through East
Tennessee. There are also various cross-chains, among them the Black
Mountains. In these ranges are eighty-two peaks that rise above five
thousand feet and forty-three exceeding six thousand feet. The highest
mountains of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina are the Grandfather and
the Pinnacle, rising nearly six thousand feet. In the Great Smoky
Mountains, Clingman's Dome is sixty-six hundred and sixty feet high
and Mount Guyot sixty-six hundred and thirty-six feet. The highest
peak of all is in the Black Mountains, and it is the highest east of
the Rockies, Mount Mitchell rising sixty-six hundred and eighty-eight
feet. Between and among these ranges are the sources of Tennessee
River, in the Clinch River, the Holston and its North Fork, and the
French Broad, their head streams coming westward out of Virginia and
North Carolina through the mountain passes. The extensive mountain
region they drain in North Carolina and East Tennessee is a most
attractive district, noted as a health resort, and famous for the
sturdy independence of its people, while along the Tennessee and upon
the mountains near it were fought some of the greatest battles of the
Civil War.
Upon the Tennessee River, at the head of navigation, and near the
junction-point of the three States, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, is
Chattanooga, the Indian "crow's nest," now a busy manufacturing city
and a great railroad centre, served by no less than nine different
roads diverging in all directions, the iron, coal and timber of the
neighboring country having given it an impetus that has brought a
population of fifty thousand. This city has had all its development
since the Civil War, and is the seat of Grant University of the
Methodist Church, attended by six hundred students. It borders the
river winding along the base of the Missionary Ridge and the famous
Lookout Mountain. The battlefields upon them have been placed in
control of a Government Commission, who have laid out the Chickamauga
and Chattanooga Military Park, restoring all the roads used by troops
during the battles, and marking the points of interest and the
locations of regiments and batteries by tablets and monuments. There
are sixty miles of driveways on the field, which embraces over five
thousand acres of woodland cleared of underbrush and fifteen hundred
acres of open ground. Here have been identified and accurately laid
down the brigade lines of battle of seven distinct and successive
engagements in the series of terrific contests that were fought, all
of them being plainly marked. The fighting positions of batteries for
both sides have been indicated by the location of guns of the same
pattern as those used in the engagement. There are thus marked
thirty-five battery positions on one side and thirty-three on the
other, mounting over two hundred guns. The restoration to the
conditions existing at the times of the battles is almost complete,
both the Northern and Southern States that had troops engaged,
actively aiding the historical labor. Lookout Mountain rises to the
south of the city, its summit being over twenty-one hundred feet high,
and it commands a superb view, extending over seven States.
Inclined-plane railways ascend it, and there is a hotel at the top,
and also another railway along the crest of the ridge. Upon the summit
of this mountain, which is almost a plateau, the boundaries of the
three States come together, and it overlooks to the northward the
plain of Chattanooga and the windings of Tennessee River, traced far
to the southwest along the base of the ridge into Alabama. The
favorite post for the magnificent view from the mountain top is Point
Rock, a jutting promontory of massive stone reared on high, and
overhanging like a balcony the deep valley. Far beneath, the river in
its grand and graceful sweeping curves forms the famous Moccasin Bend,
which almost enfolds the city of Chattanooga, and then spreads beyond,
fringed with forest and field, a waving silvery gleaming thread, until
lost to view.
Beyond Missionary Ridge is the battlefield of Chickamauga, the "river
of death," a stream flowing up from Georgia into the Tennessee, about
twelve miles east of Chattanooga. General Rosecrans commanded the
Union forces holding Chattanooga in 1863 and General Bragg the
opposing Confederates. The conflict began September 19th by the
Confederates attempting to turn Rosecrans' left wing and get
possession of the roads leading into Chattanooga, and it continued
fiercely for two days, when the Union forces withdrew, and the result
was a nominal victory for the Confederates on the field, although
Chattanooga and East Tennessee, the prize for which the battle was
fought, remained in possession of the Union forces. This was one of
the bloodiest battles of the war, thirty-four thousand being killed
and wounded on both sides out of one hundred and twelve thousand
engaged. Immediately after the battle, Rosecrans withdrew behind the
fortifications of Chattanooga, while Bragg moved up and occupied
positions upon Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, extending his
flanks to the Tennessee River above and below the city. He cut the
communications westward, and the Union army was practically blockaded
and in danger of starvation. Rosecrans was relieved and Grant took
command. He ordered Sherman to join him, coming up from the southwest,
and by the close of October had opened communication along the
Tennessee River and secured ample supplies. Bragg, who felt he was in
strong position, detached Longstreet with a large force to go
northeast in November and attack Burnside at Knoxville. Sherman's army
joined Grant on the 23d, and next day the battle began on Lookout
Mountain, continuing on the 25th on Missionary Ridge, and Bragg was
driven out of his position and his army pursued in disorder through
the mountains, over six thousand prisoners being taken. As the Union
forces ascended Lookout Mountain in the mist, this has been called the
"Battle above the Clouds." Burnside was afterwards relieved at
Knoxville, and these decisive victories, which broke the Confederate
power in Tennessee, resulted in Grant being made a Lieutenant General
the next year and placed in command of all the armies of the United
States.
At the head of navigation for steamboats on the Tennessee River is
Knoxville, the chief city of East Tennessee, in a fine location among
the foothills of the Clinch Mountains, which are a sort of offshoot of
the Cumberland range. This was the spot where General Knox, then
Secretary of War, in the latter part of the eighteenth century made a
treaty with the Indians of the upper Tennessee, and the village which
grew there was named after him. It is the centre of the Tennessee
marble district, shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of this
beautiful stone all over the country. It also has coal and iron and
other industries, and a population of over forty thousand. Here are
the buildings of the University of Tennessee, with five hundred
students, and also an Agricultural College. Knoxville was the rallying
point of Union sentiment in East Tennessee during the Civil War, and
its most noted citizen was Parson William G. Brownlow, a Methodist
clergyman and political editor, whose caustic articles earned for him
the sobriquet of the "fighting Parson." He was Governor of Tennessee
and Senator after the war, and died in Knoxville in 1877. The famous
Davy Crockett was also a resident of that city. Twelve miles west of
Knoxville, at Low's Ferry, Admiral Farragut was born, July 5, 1801,
and a marble shaft marking the place was dedicated by Admiral Dewey in
May, 1900. A short distance above Knoxville the Tennessee River is
formed by the union of the Holston and French Broad Rivers. Following
up the Holston, we come to Morristown, and beyond to Greenville,
where, in sight of the railway, are the grave and monument of
President Andrew Johnson, who lived there the greater part of his
life, and died there in 1875. His residence and the little wooden
tailor shop where he worked are still preserved. High mountains are
all about, and to the eastward from Johnson City a narrow-gauge
railway ascends through the romantic canyon of Doe River, in places
fifteen hundred feet deep, up the Roan Mountain to Cranberry. This
line is known in the neighborhood, on account of its crookedness, as
the "Cranberry Stem-Winder." On the summit of Roan Mountain is the
Cloudland Hotel, at an elevation of more than sixty-three hundred
feet, the highest human habitation east of the Rockies, and having a
magnificent view. It is a curious circumstance that the boundary line
between Tennessee and North Carolina on the mountain top runs through
the hotel, and is painted a broad white band along the dining-room
floor, while out of the windows are views for a hundred miles in
almost every direction.
THE LAND OF THE SKY.
We have come to the famous region in Western North Carolina, the
resort for health and pleasure, the "Land of the Sky," sought both in
winter and summer on account of its pure, bracing atmosphere and
equable climate, and where eighty thousand visitors go in a year.
Between the Unaka and Great Smoky range of mountains which is the
western North Carolina boundary, and the Blue Ridge to the eastward,
there is a long and diversified plateau with an average elevation of
two thousand feet, stretching two hundred and fifty miles from
northeast to southwest, and having a width of about twenty-five miles.
Various mountain spurs cross it between the ranges from one towards
the other, and numerous rivers rising in the Blue Ridge flow westward
over it and break through picturesque gorges in the Great Smoky
Mountains to reach the Tennessee River, the most noted of these
streams being the French Broad. From any commanding point along the
Great Smoky range there may be seen stretching to the east and south a
vast sea of ridges, peaks and domes. No single one dominates, but most
all of them reach nearly the same altitude, appearing like the waves
in a choppy sea, the ranges growing gradually less distinct as they
are more distant. The whole region seems to be covered with a mantle
of dark forest, excepting an occasional clearing or patch of
lighter-colored grass. Very few rocky ledges appear, so that the
slopes are smoothed and softened by the generous vegetation. The
atmosphere also tends to the same result, the blue haze, so rarely
absent, giving the names both to the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky
Mountains. This haze softens everything and imparts the effect of
great distance to peaks but a few miles away. Thus the remarkable
atmospheric influence produces more impressive views than are got from
greater peaks and longer distances in a clearer air elsewhere. The
most elevated peak of the district, Mount Mitchell, rises four hundred
and twenty-five feet higher than Mount Washington in the White
Mountains. It was named for Professor Elisha Mitchell, who was an
early explorer, a native of Connecticut, and Professor in the
University of North Carolina, who lost his life during a storm on the
mountain in 1857, and is buried at the summit. From its sides the
beautiful Swannanoa River, the Indian "running water," flows eighteen
miles westward to fall into the French Broad at Asheville, the centre
and chief city of this charming region, whose fame has become
world-wide.
"Land of forest-clad mountains, of fairy-like streams,
Of low, pleasant valleys where the bright sunlight gleams
Athwart fleecy clouds gliding over the hills,
'Midst the fragrance of pines and the murmur of rills.
"A land of bright sunsets, whose glories extend
From horizon to zenith, there richly to blend
The hues of the rainbow, with clouds passing by--
Right well art thou christened 'The Land of the Sky.'
"A land of pure water, as pure as the air;
A home for the feeble, a home for the fair;
Where the wild roses bloom, while their fragrance combines
With health-giving odors from balsamic pines.
"The pure, healthful breezes, the life-giving air,
The beauteous landscapes, oft new, ever fair,
Are gifts that have come from the Father on high;
To Him be all praise for 'The Land of the Sky.'"
In the early days of Congress, a North Carolina member, who was making
a long speech for home consumption, observed that several of his
colleagues, becoming tired, had gone out, whereupon he bluntly told
those who remained that they might go out too, if so inclined, as he
"was only talking for Buncombe." This member, whose remark has become
immortal as the title of a certain type of Congressional oratory,
represented the county of Buncombe, which embraces a large portion of
the "The Land of the Sky," and Asheville is the county-seat. This town
has a permanent population of twelve thousand, and is one of the most
elevated towns east of Denver, being at a height of nearly
twenty-three hundred feet above the sea. It is built in the
attractive valley of the French Broad River, surrounded by an
amphitheatre of magnificent hills, and commands one of the finest
mountain views in this country. The Swannanoa unites with the French
Broad just above the town in a charming locality; there are various
pleasant parks; and the tree-shaded streets are adorned by many fine
buildings. To Asheville come the Northerner for equable mildness in
winter and the Southerner for coolness in summer, the climate being
dry and bright, and most restorative in lung and other similar
troubles, while the whole surrounding region has had its scenic
attractions made available by improved roads and paths. About two
miles to the southeast is George Vanderbilt's noted chateau of
Biltmore, the finest private residence in the United States, built
upon the verge of a princely estate covering a hundred thousand acres
of these glens and mountains. The house, which commands magnificent
views, stands upon a terrace seven hundred feet long and three hundred
feet wide, and cost $4,000,000, while nearly as much more is said to
have been expended in constructing many miles of drives over the
estate and in landscape gardening and improvements, which in time will
make this one of the world's greatest show places. The building is an
extensive French baronial hall of the days of King Francis I.,
elaborated from the chateaux of the Loire, exceedingly rich in every
detail, and having the general effect heightened by the free
employment of decorative sculpture. From the grand esplanade the
outlook is upon the "wild tumult of mountains stretching away in every
direction." There are various other fine houses in the Asheville
suburbs, and the locality is steadily improving through the
attractions it has for men of wealth who love a home amid the grandest
charms of Nature. Routes have been opened in various directions from
Asheville to develop the mountain district. One railroad goes for a
hundred miles through the gorges and valleys southwestward along the
base of the Great Smoky range. Another route is southeast through the
romantic pass of the Hickory-nut Gap, where the Rocky Broad River
penetrates the Blue Ridge, a splendid canyon of nine miles, with
cliffs rising fifteen hundred feet and having the remarkable Chimney
Rock built on high alongside the gorge, where it stands up an isolated
sentinel. Bald Mountain, rising opposite, is celebrated in Mrs.
Burnett's _Esmeralda_. Cæsar's Head, to the southward, is an outlier
of these mountain ranges, bordering the lowlands; and standing on top
of its southern brow, upon a precipice rising almost sheer for fifteen
hundred feet, one can overlook the lower regions of South Carolina and
Georgia for more than a hundred miles away.
The French Broad River, the chief stream of this charming region, got
its name from the early hunters who came up from the settled regions
of Carolina nearer the coast, and penetrating the mountains explored
it. The Cherokees called it Tselica, or "The Roarer," a not
inappropriate name. The hunters who came through the Blue Ridge by the
Hickory-nut Gap in colonial times followed down the Rocky Broad that
flowed out of it into this river, which was much larger, and as the
region beyond the mountains was then controlled by the French, they
named it the French Broad. It rises in the Blue Ridge range almost on
the South Carolina boundary, and nearly interlocks its headwaters with
those of the Congaree flowing out to the Atlantic. Its upper waters
wind for forty miles through a beautiful and fertile valley, but in
approaching Asheville the scenery changes, the hills press more
closely upon the stream, its course becomes more rapid, and after a
swift turmoil it plunges down the cataract at Mountain Island. Here a
knob-topped rock rises fifty to seventy feet high, the stream forcing
its way on either hand by a channel cut through the enclosing ridge,
and it descends a cataract of forty-five feet, running away through a
deep abyss. The river passes Asheville and flows in a most picturesque
gorge through the high mountains, everywhere disclosing new beauties,
the water rushing and roaring over ledges and boulders, going around
sharp bends, receiving gushing tributaries coming down the mountain
side or trickling over the face of some broad high cliff. Massive
rocks rise on high, and the road is often on a shelf cut into their
face, the river boiling along far down below. Then the valley
broadens, and here, in a lovely vale surrounded by the mountains, are
the North Carolina Hot Springs, a popular resort, with a climate even
milder in winter than at Asheville, as the Great Smoky range protects
it from the northern blasts. The curative properties of these springs
are efficacious in rheumatic and cutaneous diseases. Beyond, the bold
precipices overhang the road and river that are known as the Paint
Rocks, where the rushing torrent forces its way through a gorge
between the Great Smoky and Bald Mountains and then emerges in
Tennessee, to finally fall into the Tennessee River at the junction
with the Holston just above Knoxville. These rocks received their name
from Indian pictures and signs painted upon them. William Gillmore
Simms, the Carolina author, tells in _Tselica_ the legend of this
spot, founded on the tradition of the Cherokees that a siren lives on
the French Broad who allures the hunter to the stream and strangles
him in her embrace. Thus have the American aborigines reproduced in
their way on this beautiful river the romantic legends of the Lorelie
Rock on the Rhine, where, the ancient German legend tells us so
interestingly, there dwelt another beautiful siren whose seductive
music lured her lovers to the rock, when she drowned them in the waves
washing its base.
CAROLINA AND GEORGIA.
Eastward from the Blue Ridge the extended line of the Piedmont Branch
of the Southern Railway parallels the base of the range on its route
from Washington southwest to Atlanta. The railroad from Asheville
southeast to Columbia and Charleston crosses it at Spartansburg in
South Carolina. This is a prosperous little town in a region of iron
and gold-mines, with also a development of mineral springs, attractive
as a summer resort to the people of Charleston and residents of the
South Carolina lowlands. Ten miles northeast of Spartansburg is the
Revolutionary battlefield of the Cowpens, getting its name from the
adjacent cow-pasture in the olden time. Here on a hill-range called
the Thickety Mountain, January 17, 1781, the British under Tarleton
were signally defeated. The railway passes through a rolling country,
and thirty-three miles farther northeast is King's Mountain, where the
previous battle was fought, October 7, 1780, in which the British
under Colonel Ferguson were also defeated and a large part of their
forces captured. Beyond, the boundary is crossed from South to North
Carolina and Charlotte is reached, having cotton factories and gold
mines and twelve thousand people, the county-seat of Mecklenburg,
where the famous resolutions were passed, May 20, 1775, demanding
independence. Farther northeast is Salisbury, where was located one
of the chief Confederate prisons during the Civil War, and the
National Cemetery now contains the graves of over twelve thousand
soldiers who died there in captivity. Beyond this, the Yadkin River is
crossed, and the route enters the tobacco district. Here is
Greensboro', and near it the Revolutionary battle of Guilford Court
House was fought March 15, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis defeated General
Greene. To the eastward is Chapel Hill, the seat of the University of
North Carolina, with three hundred students. Farther east is the great
tobacco town of Durham, with large factories and six thousand people
supported by this industry, whose education is cared for by Trinity
College, which has been munificently endowed by the tobacco princes
Colonels Duke and Carr. Twenty-five miles still farther east is
Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, a city of fifteen thousand
inhabitants, built on high ground near the Neuse River. It has a
central Union Square from which fine streets diverge, and here is
located the impressive State House, modelled after the Parthenon.
Raleigh has various public institutions, and large cemeteries where
the dead of both armies who fell in the Civil War are buried.
The Congaree River, flowing southeast out of the Blue Ridge,
intersects the extensive Pine Barrens of South Carolina, and here on
the railway route from Asheville via Spartansburg to Charleston is the
South Carolina State capital, Columbia. It is built on the bluffs
along the river, a few miles below its falls, and in a charming
location, the view of the valley from the grounds of the Executive
Mansion and Arsenal Hill being very fine. The South Carolina State
House is a magnificent building on which a large sum has been
expended, and in the grounds is a monument to the Palmetto Regiment of
South Carolinians who served with distinction in the war with Mexico.
It was here that the Nullification Ordinance was passed in 1832, and
the Secession Ordinance in December, 1860. General Sherman, on his
march from Atlanta to the sea in February, 1865, occupied Columbia,
when, unfortunately, the city was set fire and a large portion
destroyed. The Pine Barrens and sand hills of South Carolina stretch
southwestward from the Congaree to the Savannah River, and in this
region is the popular winter resort of Aiken, surrounded by vast
forests of fragrant pines growing in a soil of white sand, the town
being a gem in the way of gardens and shrubbery which, with the balmy
atmosphere, make it additionally attractive. While Aiken does not have
a large population, yet it has very wide streets to accommodate them,
the main avenue being two hundred and five feet and the cross streets
one hundred and fifty feet wide. Its attractiveness of climate is
condensed into the statement that the Aiken winter is "four months of
June." A few miles westward is the Savannah River, and here at the
head of navigation is Augusta, Georgia, on the western bank, a great
cotton mart and seat of textile factories, which have attracted a
population of thirty-five thousand, the city being known as the
"Lowell of the South." The Sibley Cotton Mill is regarded as being
architecturally the handsomest factory in the world. The whole
surrounding district is an almost universal cotton-field, thus
furnishing the raw materials for this industry. Near this mill stands
the tall chimney of the Confederate Powder Works, left as a grim
memorial of the Civil War. The various mills are served by canals
bringing the water for power from the Savannah River at a higher level
above the city, with an ample fall. Augusta is regarded as one of the
most beautiful of the Southern cities, having wide tree-embowered
streets and many ornate buildings, and it fortunately escaped injury
during the Civil War. It was laid out by General Oglethorpe, the
Georgia founder, on the same artistic plan as Savannah, and he named
it after the English princess, Augusta. The Savannah River, the
largest of Georgia, and forming the boundary with South Carolina,
rises in the Blue Ridge in close proximity to the headwaters of the
Tennessee and the Chattahoochee. Its initial streams, the Tugaloo and
Kiowee, unite in the Piedmont district to form the Savannah, which
then flows four hundred and fifty miles past Augusta and Savannah to
the sea.
ATLANTA AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.
The Chattahoochee was the Indian "river of the pictured rocks." Its
head-streams rise in the Blue Ridge in northeastern Georgia, and
flowing southwest and afterwards south, it forms the western boundary
of the State. Then uniting with the Flint River, the two make the
Appalachicola, which, crossing Florida, empties into the Gulf. The
Chattahoochee in its course passes, about seven miles from the Georgia
capital, Atlanta, the "Gate City," the metropolis of the "Empire State
of the South," and the chief Southern railway centre. Being largely a
growth of the railway system of the "New South," the city is
picturesquely situated on a hilly surface, elevated a thousand feet
above the sea, and is laid out in the form of a circle of about four
miles radius around the Union Passenger Depot, which is the central
point. The first house was built at this place in 1836, on an Indian
trail to the crossing of the Chattahoochee, whither a railroad was
projected, and for several years it was called, for this reason,
Terminus, being afterwards incorporated as the town of Marthasville,
and named after the Georgia Governor Lumpkin's daughter. In 1845, the
first railroads were constructed connecting it with the seaboard, and
soon becoming a tobacco and cotton-mart, it grew rapidly, and in 1847
was incorporated as the city of Atlanta, having about twenty-five
hundred people. During the Civil War it was a leading Confederate
depot of supplies, but its great growth has come since, and largely
through the development of the railway system and manufactures, so
that now the city and suburbs, which are extensive, have a population
approximating two hundred thousand. Its State Capitol is an impressive
building, costing $1,000,000, and it has many imposing business and
public structures and fine private residences. Joel Chandler Harris,
_Uncle Remus_, is a resident of Atlanta. Its great historical event
was the memorable siege during the Civil War. The geographical
position of the city made it of vital importance to the Confederacy.
General Sherman, in his advance southward from Chattanooga in the
spring and early summer of 1864, steadily fought and outflanked the
Confederates, until in July they fell back behind the Chattahoochee
and took a line covering Atlanta, General Hood assuming command July
17th. Sherman crossed the Chattahoochee and then Hood retired to the
intrenchments around the city. For several weeks there were
manoeuvres and battles around Atlanta, until near the end of August,
when Sherman had got behind the city, cutting the railways supplying
it. On the night of September 1st, Hood evacuated Atlanta, and next
day Sherman entered. In this great siege and in the previous contests
from Chattanooga the losses of the two armies were sixty-six thousand
men, each army having been repeatedly reinforced. This capture sealed
the doom of the Confederacy, although there were subsequent battles
and movements around Atlanta until November. Then Sherman, reinforcing
General Thomas at Nashville, and leaving him to take care of Hood, ran
back all the surplus property and supplies to Chattanooga, broke up
the railway, cut the telegraph behind him, burnt Atlanta November
12th, and on the 15th started on his famous "March to the Sea," to cut
the Confederacy in two, capturing Savannah in December. The
destruction of Atlanta was almost complete, every building being burnt
excepting a few in the centre, and a number of scattered dwellings
elsewhere. After peace came, however, the restoration of Atlanta was
rapid and thorough, and it is now one of the most progressive and
wealthy Southern cities. It was Sherman's "March to the Sea" which
furnished the theme for one of the most inspiriting songs of the Civil
War, "Marching Through Georgia":
"Bring the good old bugle, boys! we'll sing another song--
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.
_Chorus_--"'Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!'
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
"How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.--_Chorus_,
"So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude--three hundred to the main,
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia."--_Chorus._
The railway leading north from Atlanta to Chattanooga exhibits,
throughout the line, relics of Sherman's protracted struggle with the
Confederates as he pressed southward, and they opposing him were
repeatedly outflanked and retired to new defenses. Long ranges of
hills cross the country from northeast to southwest, and on their
crests are the remains of massive breastworks and battlements which
time is gradually obliterating. Dalton, Resaca and Allatoona were all
formidable defensive works, and each in turn was outflanked. Rome, the
chief town on this route, now has seven thousand people and various
factories. To the westward of Atlanta the railway leads a hundred
miles to Anniston, Alabama, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge among
the rich beds of Alabama iron-ores, and then to Talladega, the Indian
"village on the border," where General Jackson fought one of his
severest battles with the Creeks. It is now a busy manufacturing town.
Beyond is the great industrial city of Birmingham with thirty-five
thousand people, founded in 1871, a phenomenal development of the "New
South," its industry being exhibited in enormous iron and steel
mills, foundries, and similar establishments. Near the city is its El
Dorado, the Red Mountain containing vast stores of hematite iron-ores,
with abundant coal and limestone, minerals which have made Alabama the
third iron-producing commonwealth in the United States, three-fourths
of it being made in the Birmingham district. Nearby is another iron
town of recent foundation, Bessemer, and a short distance to the
southwest the old Alabama city of Tuscaloosa, the seat of the
University of Alabama. This Indian word means the "Black Warrior," and
thus was named the river, Tuscaloosa being at the head of steamboat
navigation on the Black Warrior. The tradition is that before the
white man knew this region it was held by a proud and powerful Indian
tribe. When De Soto came along in 1540, searching for gold, he
encountered these Indians, whose sachem was the fearless and haughty
black giant Tuscaloosa. By stratagem De Soto captured the giant and
carried him off a hostage down to Mobile, whence he afterwards
escaped. This old city is shown on a French map of Louisiana published
in 1720.
Southeast of Atlanta is Macon, at the head of navigation on Ocmulgee
River, a prominent cotton-shipping city, with twenty-five thousand
people. Here is the Wesleyan Female College with four hundred
students, founded in 1836, and said to be the oldest female college in
the world. To the southward, at Andersonville, was the great Stockade
Prison of the Civil War, where large numbers of captured Union
soldiers were confined, being so badly treated that thirteen thousand
of them died. Henry Wirtz, a Swiss adventurer, was in charge, and the
Confederate authorities in two official reports attributed the
excessive mortality to the bad management of the prison. A military
court after the close of the war convicted Wirtz of excessive cruelty,
and he was executed in November, 1865. The prison-grounds are now a
park, a memorial monument has been erected, and in an extensive
National Cemetery the dead soldiers are buried. Southward of Atlanta
is Columbus, with thirty-five thousand people and large cotton,
woollen and flour-mills, one of the chief manufacturing cities of the
Southern States. It stands on the Chattahoochee, which here rushes
down rocky rapids, providing an admirable water-power improved by a
massive dam. The river is navigable to the Gulf, and its steamboats
have a large trade.
ATLANTA TO MOBILE.
Proceeding southwest from Atlanta, the route crosses the Chattahoochee
at West Point, another shipping port for the vast cotton plantations
of this region, whence steamboats take the cotton-bales down to the
Gulf. Beyond is Tuskegee in Alabama, where is located the famous
Industrial and Normal Institute for colored youth, conducted by
Booker T. Washington, the distinguished colored educationalist, who
was born a slave in Virginia. It was founded in a small way by him in
1881 to meet the needs of education, and particularly to provide for
the training of teachers for the colored race, and having greatly
grown, has sent out nearly four hundred of its graduates throughout
the South, where they are teaching others of their people. It has
seventy instructors and over a thousand students; its lands cover
nearly four square miles and there are forty-two buildings, many of
them substantial brick structures erected by the students, the
property being valued at $300,000. Great attention is given to manual
training, and this institution, entirely supported by donations and
requiring $75,000 annually for its expenses, is doing a great work in
furthering the advancement of the colored race in the South.
A short distance westward, the Alabama River is formed by the union of
the Coosa and Tallapoosa, and coming down a winding course a few miles
from the junction, sweeps around a grand bend to then go away towards
the setting sun, and ultimately seek the Gulf. The story is that a
wearied Creek Indian, seeking quiet in the far-off land, wandered out
of the mountains to the fertile plains of this attractive region.
Charmed by the scenery and the beauties of the valley, when he reached
the bank of the river he gazed about him, and then struck his spear
into the earth, saying _Alabama_--"Here we Rest." At this grand bend
of the river, upon a circle of hills surrounded by rich farming lands,
is Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. There was an Indian village
here in remote times, and traders came to the place, so that gradually
a settlement grew, which in 1817 was made a town and named after the
unfortunate General Montgomery who fell in storming Quebec. The bluffs
rise to Capitol Hill, crowned with the State House, a small but
imposing structure, having from its elevated dome an extensive view.
Here was organized the Government of the Confederate States in
February, 1861, continuing until the capital was removed to Richmond
the following May. In the grounds there is a handsome Confederate
Monument. There are thirty thousand people in Montgomery, and it has a
large trade in cotton, gathered from the adjacent districts, shipped
down the river to Mobile and also by railroad to Savannah for export.
In the suburbs are many old-fashioned plantation residences, and the
adjacent country is largely a cotton-field, the great Southern staple
growing luxuriantly on the black soils of this region. The Alabama
people devote themselves chiefly to cotton-growing, and this industry
leads throughout the vast section of the South below the Tennessee
boundary. This great product is the leading foreign export of the
United States, and being indirectly the cause of the Civil War, it
brought to the Confederacy the sympathy of the nations of Europe,
which were the chief consumers. Cotton is said to have originated in
India, and in America was first cultivated for its flowers in
Maryland. It was not until about the beginning of the nineteenth
century, however, that the invention by Eli Whitney of the cotton-gin
enabled the seeds to be easily removed from the lint, and thus
enlarged the uses of cotton, so that a rapid increase was given its
growth and also its manufacture throughout the civilized world. Both
the seed and the lint are now used, the former producing valuable oil.
The Alabama River flows a winding course from Montgomery southwest to
Mobile Bay, first going westward to Selma. It passes a region of the
finest cotton lands, where originally the old southern plantation
system reached its richest development, and where the modern plan of
smaller farms has been making some headway since the Civil War. Selma
is the _entrepôt_ of what is known as the Alabama "Black Belt," built
on a high bluff along the river, and has cotton factories and other
industries, including large mills for crushing the cotton-seed and
producing the oil. To the westward, over the boundary of the State of
Mississippi, is Meridian, a manufacturing town of fifteen thousand
people, which has grown around a railway junction. This was the place
which General Sherman, in one of his rapid marches, captured in
February, 1864, and destroyed, the General reporting that his army
made "the most complete destruction of railways ever beheld." Farther
westward, on Pearl River, is Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, a
small city with an elaborate State House. The Alabama River flows
southwest from Selma and joins the Tombigbee River coming from the
north, the stream thus formed being the Mobile River. A few miles
below the junction it divides into two branches, of which the eastern
is called the Tensas, both then dividing into several others and
making a sort of delta, but meeting again in a common embouchure at
the head of Mobile Bay, the Mobile River being about fifty miles long.
The Tombigbee River is four hundred and fifty miles in length, and
rises in the hills of Northeastern Mississippi. The name is Indian,
and means the "coffin-makers," though why this name was given is
unknown. The Tombigbee became celebrated in politics in the early
nineteenth century, through a correspondence between the Treasury at
Washington and a customs officer at Mobile, wherein the latter, being
asked "How far does the Tombigbee River run up?" replied that "The
Tombigbee River does not run up; it runs down." He was removed from
office for his levity, and the controversy following, which became an
acrimonious partisan dispute, gave the river its celebrity.
MOBILE AND ITS BAY.
When De Soto journeyed through Florida and to the Mississippi River,
he found in this region the powerful tribe of Mauvillians, and their
village of Mavilla is mentioned in early histories of Florida. From
this is derived the name of Mobile, on the western bank of the river
near the head of Mobile Bay, the only seaport of the State of Alabama,
about thirty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This was the original seat
of French colonization in the southwest, and for a few years the
capital of their colony of Louisiana. It was settled at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. In 1710 the Sieur de Bienville transferred
the earliest French colony from Biloxi to Mobile Bay, and many of the
first settlers were French Canadians. In 1723, however, the seat of
the colonial government was removed from Mobile to New Orleans. In
1763 this region was transferred to England; in 1780 England gave it
to Spain; and in 1813 Spain made it over to the United States. The
city is laid out upon a plain having a background of low hills; its
broad and quiet streets are shaded with live oaks and magnolias; and
everywhere are gardens, luxuriant with shrubbery and flowers. There is
a population approximating thirty-five thousand, but the city does not
make much progress, owing to the difficulties of maintaining a
deep-water channel, though this has been better accomplished of late.
Cotton export is the chief trade. There are attractive parks, a
magnificent shell road along the shore of the bay for several miles,
and fine estates with beautiful villas on the hills in the suburbs.
The harbor entrance from the Gulf is protected on either hand by Fort
Morgan and Fort Gaines, while the remains can be seen of several
batteries on the shores of the bay, relics of the Civil War. Over on
Tensas River is a ruin, Spanish Fort, one of the early colonial
defenses, while in the city is the Guard House Tower, a quaint old
structure built in Spanish style. Mobile was held by the Confederates
throughout the war, not surrendering until after General Lee had done
so in April, 1865, although the Union forces had previously captured
the harbor entrance. This capture was one of Admiral Farragut's
achievements. Having opened the Mississippi River in 1863, Farragut,
in January, 1864, made a reconnoissance of the forts at the entrance
to Mobile Bay, and expressed the opinion that with a single iron-clad
and five thousand men he could take the city. Several months elapsed,
however, before the attempt was made, but in August he got together a
fleet of four iron-clads and fourteen wooden vessels, and on the 5th
ran past the forts at the entrance, after a desperate engagement, in
which one of his ships, the Tecumseh, was sunk by striking a torpedo,
and he lost three hundred and thirty-five men. During the fight,
Farragut watched it and gave his directions from a place high up in
the main rigging of his flagship, the Hartford. Shoal water and
channel obstructions prevented his ascending to the city, but in a few
days the forts surrendered, the harbor was held, and blockade-running,
which had been very profitable, ceased.
Mobile Bay is one of the finest harbors on the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico. Its broad waters have low shores, backed by gentle slopes
leading up to forest-clad plateaus behind, a large surface being
wooded and displaying fine magnolias and yellow pines, while in the
lowland swamps and along the water-courses are cypress, and
interspersed the live oak, festooned with gray moss. But almost
everywhere Southern Alabama, like Florida, displays splendid pine
forests, reminding of Longfellow's invocation to _My Cathedral:_
"Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones,
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing! Listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship without words."
And in garden and grove, all about, there is a wealth of semi-tropical
flowers and shrubbery, with their rich perfumes crowned by the
delicious orange tree, whereof Hoyt thus pleasantly sings:
"Yes, sing the song of the orange tree,
With its leaves of velvet green;
With its luscious fruit of sunset hue,
The finest that ever was seen;
The grape may have its bacchanal verse,
To praise the fig we are free;
But homage I pay to the queen of all,
The glorious orange tree."
THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
XX.
THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Father of Waters -- Its Drainage Area -- The Big Muddy
-- Sources of the Missouri -- The Great Falls -- Fort Benton
-- Sioux City -- Council Bluffs -- Omaha -- St. Joseph --
Atchison -- Leavenworth -- Lawrence -- Topeka -- Osowatomie
-- John Brown -- Kansas Emigrants -- The Walls of Corn --
Kansas City -- Wyandotte -- Chillicothe -- Florida -- Mark
Twain -- Muscatine -- Burlington -- Nauvoo -- Keokuk -- Des
Moines -- St. Louis -- Jefferson Barracks -- Egypt --
Belmont -- Columbus -- Island No. 10 -- Fort Pillow -- The
Chickasaws -- Memphis -- Mississippi River Peculiarities --
Its Deposits and Cut-Offs -- The Alluvial Bottom Lands --
St. Francis Basin -- Helena -- White River -- Arkansas River
-- Fort Smith -- Little Rock -- Arkansas Hot Springs --
Washita River -- Napoleon -- Yazoo Basin -- Vicksburg --
Natchez Indians -- Natchez -- Red River -- Texarkana --
Shreveport -- Red River Rafts -- Atchafalaya River -- Baton
Rouge -- Biloxi -- Beauvoir -- Pass Christian -- New Orleans
-- Battle of New Orleans -- Lake Pontchartrain -- The
Mississippi Levees -- Crevasses -- The Delta and Passes --
The Balize -- The Forts -- South Pass -- Eads Jetties --
Gulf of Mexico.
THE BIG MUDDY.
The great "Father of Waters," with its many tributaries, drains a
territory of a million and a half square miles, in which live almost
one-half the population of the United States. The length of the
Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico is about
twenty-six hundred miles, the actual distance in a direct line being
but sixteen hundred and sixty miles. Its name comes from the Ojibway
words _Misi Sepe_, meaning the "great river, flowing everywhere," and
the early explorers spelled it "Mesasippi." The Iroquois called it the
Kahnahweyokah, having much the same meaning. The upper waters of the
Mississippi have already been described in a preceding chapter, and
taken in connection with its chief tributary, the Missouri, it is one
of the longest rivers in the world, the distance from the source to
the Gulf being almost forty-two hundred miles. The Dakotas called this
stream _Minni-shosha_, or the "muddy water," and its popular name
throughout the Northwest, from the turbid current it carries, has come
to be the "Big Muddy." The head streams rise in Idaho, the _Eda Hoe_
of the Nez Perces, meaning the "Light on the Mountains," and in
Wyoming. The name of the Indian nation through whose lands its upper
waters flow--the Dakotahs--means the "Confederate People," indicating
a league of various tribes. The Mississippi drains practically the
whole country between the Appalachian Mountains on the east and the
"Continental Divide" of the Rockies on the west.
The Missouri River is formed in southwestern Montana, by the union of
the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers. Its length from the source
of the Madison River in the Yellowstone National Park to its
confluence with the Mississippi above St. Louis is about three
thousand miles. The first exploration of the headwaters of the
Missouri was by the famous expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark in
1805, who ascended to its sources, and crossing the Rockies descended
the Snake and Columbia Rivers into Oregon. They found the confluence
of the three rivers making the Missouri, in July, and called it "the
Three Forks," at the same time naming the rivers after President
Jefferson and his Secretaries of State and the Treasury. The Missouri,
from the junction, first flows northward through the defiles of the
Rockies, and breaks out of the mountain wall in Prickly Pear Canyon,
at the Gate of the Mountains, where the rocky cliffs rise twelve
hundred feet. Forty miles northeast it goes down its Great Falls to a
lower plateau, having a total descent of nearly five hundred feet, the
stream contracting in the gorge to a width of three hundred yards, and
tumbling over repeated cascades, with intervening rapids. The Black
Eagle descends fifty feet, Colter's Falls twelve feet, the Crooked
Falls twenty feet, the Rainbow forty-eight feet, and the Great Falls
ninety-two feet, this series of rapids and cascades covering a
distance of sixteen miles. Lewis and Clark were the first white men
who saw these magnificent cataracts of the Upper Missouri, and they
named the different falls. The Black Eagle was named from the fact
that on an island at its foot an eagle had fixed her nest on a
cottonwood tree. It is recorded by a United States Engineer officer
who was there in 1860, that the eagle's nest then still remained in
the cottonwood tree on the island, being occupied by a bald eagle of
large size. Again in 1872 the nest and the old eagle were still there,
and from the longevity of these birds, it was then believed to be the
same eagle seen in 1805. The old eagle nest and cottonwood tree are
all gone now, and in their place are a big dam, power-house and huge
ore-smelter, worked by the ample water-power of the fall. The
flourishing town of Great Falls gets its prosperity from these
cataracts and is a prominent locality for copper-smelting, having
fifteen thousand people. At the head of river navigation, some
distance farther down, is the military post of Fort Benton. The river
then flows eastward through Montana, receives the Yellowstone at Fort
Buford and turns southeast in North Dakota, passing Bismarck, the
capital, and flowing south and southeast it becomes the boundary
between Nebraska and Kansas on the west, and South Dakota, Iowa and
Missouri on the northeast. Its course is through an alluvial valley of
great fertility, from which it gathers the sediment with which its
waters are so highly charged. Much of the adjacent territory in Dakota
and Montana is covered by the extensive reservations of the Indian
tribes of the Northwest, where the remnants now live a semi-nomadic
life under military guardianship and government control. The river
flows past Yankton, a supply post for these reservations, which being
the settlement farthest up-stream, was thus named Yankton, meaning
"the village at the end." Some distance below, the Big Sioux River
flows in, forming the boundary between Dakota and Iowa, and here is
Sioux City, where there are forty thousand people, much trade, and
important manufactures.
Below here lived the Omahas, or "up-stream" Indians, and soon the
Missouri in its onward course flows between Omaha and Council Bluffs.
Here the bluffs bordering the river recede for some distance on the
eastern bank, making a broad plain adjoining the shore, whither the
Indians of all the region formerly came to hold their councils and
make treaties. A settlement naturally grew at the Council Bluffs,
which is now a city of twenty-five thousand people on the plain and
adjacent hills, with fine residences in the numerous glens
intersecting the bluffs in every direction. Three bridges cross the
Missouri to Omaha, on the western shore, two for railways, one of them
being the great steel bridge carrying over the Union Pacific, the
pioneer railroad constructed to the Pacific Coast. Omaha is the chief
city of Nebraska, the State receiving its name from the Nebraska
river, meaning the "place of broad shallow waters." Omaha has over one
hundred and fifty thousand people and is built on a wide plateau
elevated about eighty feet above the river, from which it gradually
slopes upward. It dates from 1854, but did not receive its impetus
until the completion of the Pacific Railway converged to it various
lines bringing an enormous trade. From its position at the initial
point it is known as the "Gate City." There are large manufactures and
its meat-packing industries are of the first importance, while its
enterprise is giving it rapid growth. The Union Pacific Railroad
pursues its route westward through Nebraska, up the valley of the
Platte River for several hundred miles, and at Fort Omaha, just north
of the city, is the military headquarters of the Department.
THE STATE OF KANSAS.
Various great railways bound to the West cross the Missouri in its
lower course. The river flows between Kansas and Missouri, and here
are St. Joseph with sixty thousand people, immense railway and
stock-yards, and many factories; and Atchison with twenty thousand
population and large flouring-mills, where the Atchison railway system
formerly had its initial point, though now it traverses the country
from Chicago southwest to Santa Fe and the Pacific Ocean. Leavenworth,
a city of twenty-five thousand, has grown at the site of Fort
Leavenworth, one of the important early posts on the Missouri. To the
southward the Kaw or Kansas River flows in, the Indian "Smoky Water,"
coming from the west, draining the greater part of the State which it
names. Upon this river is Lawrence, the seat of the Kansas State
University, having a thousand students, and of Haskell Institute, a
Government training-school for Indian boys and girls. Westward along
the Kansas River broadly spread the vast and fertile prairies making
the agricultural wealth of the State, and sixty-seven miles from the
Missouri, built on both sides of the river, is Topeka, the capital,
having thirty-five thousand people, large mills and an extensive trade
with the surrounding farm district. In this eastern portion of Kansas,
prior to the Civil War, was fought, often with bloodshed, the
protracted border contest between the free-soil and pro-slavery
parties for the possession of the State, that had so much to do with
bringing on the greater conflict. When Congress passed the bill in
1854 organizing Nebraska and Kansas into territories, an effort began
to establish slavery, and the Missourians coming over the border tried
to control. They founded Atchison and other places and sent in
settlers. At the same time Aid Societies for anti-slavery emigrants
began colonizing from New England, large numbers thus coming to
preëmpt lands. During four years the contests went on, Lawrence and
other towns being besieged and burnt. The first Free-State
Constitution was framed at Topeka in 1855, which Congress would not
approve, and the following year the pro-slavery Constitution was
enacted at Lecompton, which the people rejected. After the Civil War
began, Kansas was admitted to the Union in 1861 with slavery
prohibited. Among the free-soilers who went out to engage in these
Kansas conflicts was old John Brown. Near the Missouri border, to the
southward of Kansas River, is the little town of Osowatomie, in the
early settlement of which Brown took part. Here he had his fights with
the slavery invaders who came over from Missouri, finally burning the
place and killing Brown's son, a tragedy said to have inspired his
subsequent crusade against Harper's Ferry, which practically opened
the Civil War. A monument is erected to John Brown's memory at
Osawatomie. The New England emigration to Kansas in those momentous
times inspired Whittier's poem, _The Kansas Emigrants_:
"We cross the prairie as of old
The Pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
"We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!
"We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
"We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
"Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
"No pause nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!
"We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!"
The Civil War ended all these conflicts, and since then Kansas has
been eminently peaceful. It is now the leading State of the corn belt
which broadly crosses the middle of the United States. Its vast corn
crops make the wealth of the people, and as they may be good or poor,
the Kansan is in joy or despair. One year the farmers will be
overwhelmed with debt; the next brings an ample crop, and they pay
their debts and are in affluence. Thus throbs the pulse as the
sunshine and rains may make a corn crop in the State that sometimes
exceeds three hundred millions of bushels; and then there are not
enough railway cars available to carry away the product. In a good
crop the cornstalks grow to enormous heights, sometimes reaching
twenty feet to the surmounting tassel, and a tall man on tip-toe can
about touch the ears, while a two-pound ear is a customary weight,
with thirty-five ears to a bushel. These vast cornfields, watched
year by year and crop after crop by the hard-working wife of a Kansas
farmer, caused her to write the touching lyric which has become the
Kansas national hymn, Mrs. Ellen P. Allerton's "Walls of Corn":
"Smiling and beautiful, heaven's dome
Bends softly over our prairie home.
"But the wide, wide lands that stretched away
Before my eyes in the days of May;
"The rolling prairie's billowy swell,
Breezy upland and timbered dell;
"Stately mansion and hut forlorn--
All are hidden by walls of corn.
"All the wide world is narrowed down
To walls of corn, now sere and brown.
"What do they hold--these walls of corn,
Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn?
"He who questions may soon be told--
A great State's wealth these walls enfold.
"No sentinels guard these walls of corn,
Never is sounded the warder's horn;
"Yet the pillars are hung with gleaming gold,
Left all unbarred, though thieves are bold.
"Clothes and food for the toiling poor;
Wealth to heap at the rich man's door;
"Meat for the healthy, and balm for him
Who moans and tosses in chamber dim;
"Shoes for the barefoot; pearls to twine
In the scented tresses of ladies fine;
"Things of use for the lowly cot
Where (bless the corn!) want cometh not;
"Luxuries rare for the mansion grand,
Booty for thieves that rob the land--
"All these things, and so many more
It would fill a book but to name them o'er,
"Are hid and held in these walls of corn
Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn.
"Where do they stand, these walls of corn,
Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn?
"Open the atlas, conned by rule,
In the olden days of the district school.
"Point to this rich and bounteous land
That yields such fruits to the toiler's hand.
"'Treeless desert,' they called it then,
Haunted by beasts and forsook by men.
"Little they knew what wealth untold
Lay hid where the desolate prairies rolled.
"Who would have dared, with brush or pen,
As this land is now, to paint it then?
"And how would the wise ones have laughed in scorn
Had prophet foretold these walls of corn
Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn."
The Kansas River flows into the Missouri at Kansas City, the chief
settlement of the Missouri Valley, entirely the growth of the period
since the Civil War, through the prodigious development of the
railways. There are two cities where the Missouri is crossed by three
fine bridges, and having two hundred thousand people, the larger being
Kansas City in Missouri, on the southern river bank, and the other
adjoining is Kansas City or Wyandotte, the largest city in Kansas,
through which the Kansas River flows. The two cities are separated by
the State boundary between Kansas and Missouri. Next to Chicago, this
place has the largest stock-yards and packing-house plants, and does
an enormous trade in cattle, meats and grain, many railroads radiating
in all directions. The site was originally the home of the Wyandotte
Indians who were removed here from Ohio in 1843. The town of Wyandotte
had a small population prior to the Civil War, but the growth did not
begin until after the close of that conflict had stimulated railway
building and western colonization, and being on the trail from the
Missouri River to the southwest, this gave the first impetus. These
cities now have a rapid expansion, and are the greatest railway
centres west of the Mississippi River, their lines going to the Gulf
of Mexico and the Pacific through sections of country which are
rapidly populating and developing vast agricultural and mineral
products.
The Missouri River traverses the entire State of Missouri in winding,
turbid current from west to east. It passes Jefferson City, the State
Capital, having about seven thousand people, and just below receives
the Osage River coming up from the southwest. At Chillicothe to the
northwest is buried Nelson Kneiss, who composed the music for Thomas
Dunn English's popular ballad of _Ben Bolt_; and at Florida, to the
northeast, was born in November, 1835, the humorist, Samuel L.
Clemens, _Mark Twain_. Captain Sellers, who furnished river news to
the New Orleans _Picayune_, had used this _nom-de-plume_, and dying in
1863, Clemens adopted it. Twenty miles above St. Louis the Missouri
flows into the Mississippi, contributing the greater volume of water
to the joint stream, the clear Mississippi waters, pushed over to the
eastern bank, refusing for a long distance below to mingle with the
turbid flood of the Missouri.
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS.
The Mississippi River below the Moline Rapids at Rock Island passes
various flourishing cities, including Muscatine and Burlington, the
former having considerable trade in timber and food products, while
Burlington, a much larger place, spreads back from the bluffs and is a
busy railroad city, fronted by a beautiful reach of the river. About
thirty miles below, on the Illinois shore, is Nauvoo, a small town
chiefly raising grapes and wine, but formerly one of the leading
settlements on the river. This town was originally built by the
Mormons under the lead of their prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1838, after
they had been driven from various places in New York, Ohio and
Missouri. Nauvoo flourished greatly, reaching fifteen thousand
population, but dissensions arose and the enmity of the growing
population elsewhere caused riots, in one of which, in 1844, Smith,
who had been arrested and taken to jail at Carthage, Illinois, was
killed. Brigham Young then assumed leadership, and in 1845 removed the
colony over to the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, finally migrating
to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, two years later. Below Nauvoo are the
Lower Rapids of the Mississippi, extending twelve miles to Keokuk, a
beautiful city built partly along the river, but mostly on the summit
of the bluffs, here rising one hundred and fifty feet. Keokuk was a
noted Indian chief, his name meaning the "watchful fox." Des Moines
River, forming the boundary between Iowa and Missouri, flows in at the
lower edge of the city, having come down from the northwest and
passing the Iowa State Capital, Des Moines, at the head of navigation,
where there is a population of sixty thousand and extensive
manufactures. This city has a magnificent Capitol, erected at a cost
of $3,000,000, and its prosperity is largely due to the extensive coal
measures of the neighborhood. It has grown around the site of the
former frontier outpost of Fort Des Moines, built in the early days
for protection against the Sioux. Below are Quincy, Hannibal and
Alton, the latter being just above the confluence with the Missouri,
and then the Mississippi River flows majestically past the levee at
St. Louis, the chief city on its banks, having two great railway
bridges crossing over to the Illinois shore.
When the French held Louisiana, a grant was made in 1762 to Pierre
Ligueste Laclede and his partners to establish, as the "Louisiana Fur
Company," trading-posts on the Mississippi. Laclede in that year came
out from France to New Orleans, and in 1764, in order to open the fur
trade with the Indians on the Missouri, he ascended the Mississippi,
and on February 15th made the first settlement on the site of St.
Louis, building a house and four stores and naming the place in honor
of King Louis XV. of France. He had frequent journeys along the river,
and died upon one of them near the mouth of the Arkansas in 1778. The
post was made the capital of Upper Louisiana, but it grew very slowly,
having only a thousand people when Louisiana was ceded to the United
States in 1803. The development of steamboating and afterwards of the
railway systems, all the great lines seeking St. Louis, gave it rapid
growth subsequently, and its population now reaches seven hundred
thousand. It spreads with its vast railway terminals for nearly twenty
miles along the Mississippi, sweeping in a grand curve past the centre
of the city, which rises in repeated terraces as it extends westward
back from the river, the highest being two hundred feet above the
water-level. It has an enormous trade and extensive manufactures,
being the largest tobacco-making city in the world, and having one of
the greatest American breweries, the Anheuser-Busch Company. Its
Chamber of Commerce, of sandstone in Renaissance, is a noted building,
and its grand Court House, erected as a Greek cross, is surmounted by
a dome three hundred feet high. It also has a new and magnificent City
Hall. St. Louis been singularly free from fires, but its great
disaster was upon May 27, 1896, when a terrific tornado swept through
the city, killing three hundred people and destroying property valued
at $10,000,000.
The chief institution of learning is Washington University, which has
fine new buildings in Forest Park on the western verge of the city,
and cares for seventeen hundred students. The park system is very
extensive, spreading partially around the built-up portions and
embracing twenty-one hundred acres. The chief of these are the Forest
Park, with fine trees and drives, the Tower Grove Park, Lafayette and
Carondelet Parks, and in the northern suburbs O'Fallon Park, having
adjacent the spacious Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries. The gem of
the system, however, is the Missouri Botanical Garden of seventy-five
acres, the best of its kind in the country, which was bequeathed to
the city by Henry Shaw, a native of Sheffield, England, who came to
St. Louis, grew up with the city, and died there in 1889. The great
attraction of St. Louis is its splendid bridge crossing the
Mississippi, built by James B. Eads and completed in 1874 at a cost of
$10,000,000, carrying a railway across, with a highway on the upper
deck, being more than two thousand yards long, and resting on arches
rising fifty-five feet above the water. The railway is tunnelled
under the city for nearly a mile, and leads to the Union Station,
which is one of the largest in the world. The Merchants' Bridge, which
cost $3,000,000, brings another railway over, three miles above, and a
third bridge is projected. The vast aggregation of railways centering
at St. Louis also uses another bridge route north of the city,
crossing the Missouri just above its mouth and then the Mississippi to
Alton on the Illinois shore. The military post of St. Louis is
Jefferson Barracks down the river, an important station of the United
States army.
[Illustration: Bridge Crossing the Mississippi at St. Louis]
DESCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI.
The scenery of the Mississippi River changes below St. Louis, and it
loses much of the picturesqueness displayed by the bluff shores above.
The mass of the waters is larger, the shores lower, and the adjacent
regions more subject to overflow. There are many bends and islands,
and the Ohio River comes in at the end of the long low peninsula of
Cairo, further adding to the enormous current. The Southern Illinois
lowlands have long been known as Egypt, and upon these bottom lands
are grown prolific crops of corn. In one field in the great crop of
1899, covering over six thousand acres south of Ava, was raised six
hundred thousand bushels, the banner American cornfield of that year.
Twenty miles below Cairo is Columbus, on a high bluff upon the
Kentucky shore, having Belmont opposite in Missouri, this having been
the scene of General Grant's first battle in the Civil War. The
Confederates in 1861 had fortified Columbus and placed twenty thousand
men there to hold the Mississippi. Grant, in November, made an attack
upon Belmont, and broke up and destroyed their outpost camp in spite
of a heavy fire from Columbus, afterwards cutting his way out and
returning to Cairo. When in the next spring Forts Henry and Donelson
were captured, the Confederates found Columbus untenable and abandoned
it without a contest. Fifty miles below is Donaldson Point, and off it
the noted Island No. 10, for all these islands below Cairo were
numbered. The Union gunboats attacked Island No. 10 in March, 1862,
and carried on a bombardment and siege for a month, when it was
captured with New Madrid on the Missouri shore several miles farther
down, they being mutually dependent. The remains of earthworks are
still visible on the island, and also the canal cut to assist in the
investment. The Mississippi beyond, skirts the various bluffs of the
Chickasaw region on the eastern bank, while on the western shore are
broad alluvial lowlands, as the great river passes between Tennessee
and Arkansas. On the first Chickasaw bluff is Fort Pillow, another
Confederate stronghold, which, however, they were compelled to abandon
in June, 1862, as the Union army had got in their rear. Here
afterwards occurred the "Fort Pillow Massacre," in April, 1864, when
the Confederates under General Forrest attacked and captured it.
All the region hereabout was inhabited by the Chickasaw Indians, who
were so called in their language because they were "swamp-dwellers"
and "eaters of the bog-potato." This tribe long ago removed to the
Indian territory, where they are now in a prosperous condition and
successful agriculturists. On the southwestern border of Tennessee is
what is known as the fourth Chickasaw bluff, and here is the city of
Memphis, the leading town between St. Louis and New Orleans. The bluff
shore rises about eighty feet above the river at the ordinary stage of
water, and is fronted by a wide levee extending for two miles and a
broad esplanade bordered by warehouses. It was here that De Soto in
1541, with his band of adventurous explorers searching for gold, came
and first saw the great river, their chronicler writing home "the
river was so broad that if a man stood still on the other side, it
could not be told whether he was a man or no; the channel was very
deep, the current strong, the water muddy and filled with floating
trees." Memphis is a handsome city, attractively laid out, the
residential section having spacious lawn-bordered avenues, and there
being an attractive park in the centre, the Court Square inhabited by
numerous squirrels and adorned by Andrew Jackson's bust. Memphis has
seventy thousand people, and a large trade both by river and railroad,
being a leading cotton-shipping port, whence steamboats take vast
amounts down to New Orleans for foreign export. Among its attractions
are the cotton compresses and cotton-seed oil mills. In the Civil War,
Memphis was captured by the Union gunboats in June, 1862, and held
afterwards. On the outskirts, a grim memorial of the great conflict,
is the National Cemetery, with fourteen thousand Union soldiers'
graves.
PECULIARITIES OF THE GREAT RIVER.
The Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio is an entirely changed
river. Above that stream, it is similar to most other inland
waterways, having tolerably stable banks and not much change in width.
Below Cairo, however, the deposits forming the banks are composed of
alternate layers of sand and mud or clay, the sand having been
deposited by running water, and the mud in comparatively still water,
so that the sand-layers are readily washed out, thus causing the banks
to cave whenever the current sets against them. Below the influx of
the Ohio, the river traverses alluvial bottom lands of inexhaustible
fertility, and usually stretching to a width of forty miles or more.
These alluvial lands have a general southern slope of about eight
inches to the mile, and stretch five hundred miles to the southward,
the river winding through them in a devious course for eleven hundred
miles, occasionally on the eastern side washing bluffs of one to three
hundred feet. The slope is sufficient to create high velocities in the
current, making a very unstable channel, constantly shifting laterally
and causing the river to develop into a serpentine form, one bend
following another continuously. The immediate river, wherever it may
be at the time, is confined by banks of its own creation, which, like
all sediment-bearing rivers, are highest near the stream itself. Thus
apparently following a low ridge through the bottom lands, the
resistless mass of muddy water sweeps onward with swiftness, eroding
its outer banks in the bends and rebuilding them on the opposite
points, frequently forming islands by its deposits, and as frequently
removing them, as the direction of flow may be modified by the
unending changes in progress. Chief among these changes is the
formation of "cut-offs." Two vast eroding bends covering several miles
of distance gradually approach each other until the water forces a
passage across the narrow neck. As the channel distance between these
bends may have been many miles around, the sudden "cut-off" makes a
cascade of several feet, through which the torrent rushes with a roar
heard far away. The sandy banks dissolve like so much sugar, in a
single day the course of the river is radically changed, and
steamboats pass where a few hours before was cultivated land. The
checking of the current at the upper and lower mouths of the abandoned
channel soon obstructs them with the deposits, and in a few years
forms a crescent-shaped lake, of which there are so many in the
bottoms adjacent to the river. The convex bank in a bend is built up
as rapidly by the deposits as the opposite concave bank washes off, so
that the river does not usually become any wider in the bends on
account of the process. The deepest water is always next to the
concave or wasting bank, where the most current flows. It is not an
unusual sight along this extraordinary river to see an ancient and
well-constructed house hanging over the caving bank, destined
ultimately to drop into the water. It may originally have been a mile
from the river in the centre of an old plantation, but the mighty
current sweeping around and into the bend has worn away the land,
often dissolving it by acres, and as it dropped in, has piled the
sediment on the opposite point, thus steadily moving the river over
without materially changing the width, until it is ready to engulf the
house.
While the great river above the Ohio is generally bordered by
limestone bluffs, making stable conditions, yet below, the Mississippi
flows through a region wholly formed by its own deposits. It is said
the alluvial basin below Cairo was once an estuary of the Gulf of
Mexico, and that it has been raised in level, along with the entire
southern portion of the Continent, about a hundred feet, and then
filled in with the sediment the river carries down. This alluvial
region is sometimes as much as seventy miles wide; and when not
confined to the channel by levees, the natural course of a great
Mississippi flood is to spread entirely over the basin. These floods
will rise fifty feet, and the basin then becomes a great reservoir and
storage-ground for the surplus waters, though the levee system has
much restricted this. It is estimated that the annual discharge of the
Mississippi is twenty-one million millions of cubic feet of water, and
that it carries in a year four hundred millions of tons of solid
material down to the Gulf to be deposited; thus cutting away from its
banks a space equalling ten square miles of territory eighty feet
deep. It takes one-fourth the rainfall of its valley down to the Gulf,
or water equalling a depth of seven or eight inches over its whole
drainage area, and the solid matter annually carried along and
deposited there is equal to a body a mile square and three hundred and
sixty feet high. The flow of the river is from one to six miles an
hour in different stages and sections. The flood periods are in April
and June, the river being above the mid-stage usually from January to
August; and the lowest stage comes generally in October.
MEMPHIS TO VICKSBURG.
Following down the great river, its winding and varying channel south
of Memphis becomes the boundary between the States of Mississippi and
Arkansas. To the westward the Arkansas shore is a lowland and the
interior largely swamps, with many bayous and lakes, the tributaries
of St. Francis River, which, rising in the Iron Mountain district of
Missouri, flows four hundred and fifty miles, generally southward, to
fall into the Mississippi just above Helena. This river passes through
a continuous swamp after entering Arkansas, spreads into numerous
lakes, and its extensive basin is one of the great reservoirs of
overflow relieving the Mississippi in time of flood. Its port of
Helena has a trade in timber brought out of the neighboring swamps and
forests. About one hundred miles below, the White River and the
Arkansas River flow in upon the western shore. Very curiously, these
rivers, having mouths about fifteen miles apart, join some distance
above, their waters commingling in the alluvial bottom land. The White
River is nine hundred miles long, rises in the Ozark Mountains of
Northern Arkansas, makes a long circuit through Missouri and then
comes southward, being navigable some four hundred miles to
Batesville, the seat of Arkansas College. The Arkansas River, next to
the Missouri, is the greatest Mississippi tributary, being nearly
twenty-two hundred miles long and having its sources in the Rockies in
Colorado, out of which it flows in a magnificent canyon. It comes for
five hundred miles eastward through plains that are largely sterile,
enters Kansas, turns southeast in the Indian Territory, and crosses
the State of Arkansas to its mouth, being navigable for eight hundred
miles. At the western border of the State the river is guarded by Fort
Smith, where an active town has grown around the former frontier post
on the verge of the Indian Territory, having large trade and a
population of fifteen thousand.
In the centre of Arkansas, this great river, being about four hundred
yards wide, passes the State capital Little Rock, having thirty
thousand people, its largest city, with railways radiating in all
directions, and conducting an extensive cotton trade. Its State House
is attractive, and spreading magnolias pleasantly shade many of the
streets. A spur of the Ozark Mountains comes down to the westward of
Little Rock, and its foothills are thrust out towards the Arkansas
River. In ascending it through the lowlands from the Mississippi, the
original explorers met here the only elevations of land they had seen,
the first being a rocky cliff rising about fifty feet above the water,
which they called the "Little Rock," and on it the city has been
built, while two miles above another cliff, rising five hundred feet,
is called the "Big Rock." Southwest of Little Rock, in this spur of
the Ozark Mountains, is the famous Arkansas town of Hot Springs,
having ten thousand inhabitants and many visitors. It is located in a
narrow gorge between the Hot Springs Mountain on the east and West
Mountain, the wide Main Street being flanked on one side by
bath-houses and on the other by hotels and shops. There are over
seventy springs, rising on the western slope of the Hot Springs
Mountain above the town, and discharging daily five hundred thousand
gallons of clear, tasteless and odorless waters, of varying
temperatures, the highest 158°. They contain a little silica and
carbonate of lime, but their beneficial effects in rheumatism, gout,
costiveness and other troubles are ascribed mainly to their heat and
purity. There is a large Government Hospital here for the army and
navy, the Springs being United States property. The waters flow into
the Washita River, which passes through a pleasant valley to the
southward and then goes off nearly six hundred miles down into
Louisiana to the Red River. At the mouth of Arkansas River on the
Mississippi is the town of Napoleon.
The vast current of the Mississippi River, constantly augmented by
capacious tributaries, naturally finds outlets in times of flood
through the banks, and thus overspreads the extensive adjacent
lowlands. To the eastward, south of Memphis, and extending down almost
to Vicksburg, is the enormous Yazoo Basin, a lowland of many bayous
and lakes, making a region of excessive fertility, and its Choctaw
name has thus been naturally acquired, meaning "leafy." The river
originates in the bayous and sloughs springing from the eastern
Mississippi bank, which form the Tallahatchie River, and that stream,
uniting with the Yallabusha and the Sunflower, make the deep, winding
and very sluggish Yazoo, flowing nearly three hundred miles down to
the Mississippi, twelve miles above Vicksburg. The extensive bottom
lands of this Yazoo Delta compose about one-sixth of the State of
Mississippi, its entire northwestern portion, and being a rich
agricultural region are traversed by railways and have many
flourishing towns and villages. There is a perfect network of
waterways throughout this fertile delta, over thirty of the streams
being navigable for large steamboats, and it also has extensive
forests of valuable timber. The entire region is alluvial, the soil
having been deposited by the overflows of the Mississippi during past
ages, and now that this extensive basin is protected by an elaborate
system of levees from further overflows, almost the whole of it is
available for cultivation. There are nearly five millions of acres of
reclaimed lands here, and though less than one-fifth of this surface
is devoted to cotton, it is said to grow more of that great staple
than any other single district in the world. The malaria, often
prevalent along the Yazoo, led the Choctaws to call it the "river of
death."
Both banks of the Mississippi below the Arkansas River are lined with
cotton plantations, giving a most interesting scene during the
harvesting of the fleecy crop in the autumn. The broad plantations
disclose the comfortable and often quaint planters' houses of the
olden time embosomed in trees, and as one progresses southward the
trees become more and more draped with the dark and sombre Spanish
moss, giving a weird appearance to the shores. The Yazoo flows in, and
the long and imposing range of the Walnut Hills rises on the eastern
bank to five hundred feet elevation. Here a planter named Vick made
the first settlement in 1836, and the city of Vicksburg has grown on
the summit and slopes of the hills, the lucrative traffic of the Yazoo
delta providing a chief source of its prosperity, making it the
largest city in the state of Mississippi, there being fifteen thousand
people. It presents a picturesque view from the river, but is chiefly
known abroad from its famous siege and capture by General Grant in
July, 1863. The Confederates, having lost Memphis and New Orleans,
made their last desperate stand to hold the Mississippi River at
Vicksburg, surrounding it with vast fortifications, crowning the hills
with batteries, not only along the river front, but up the Yazoo River
to Haines' Bluff. Several attempts were made to capture it in 1862,
Farragut's fleet running past, and Grant began operations in the
spring of 1863. After several battles, he appeared before the city in
May, assaulting and being repulsed, and then began the siege which
resulted in the surrender on July 4th. General Pemberton, commanding
Vicksburg, surrendered thirty-one thousand men, his previous losses
exceeding ten thousand. General Grant had similar losses, his forces
engaged in the siege and preliminary battles approximating seventy
thousand men. This siege greatly damaged the city, while in 1876 the
Mississippi, in one of its peculiar freaks, cut through a neck of land
opposite, took an entirely new channel, and left Vicksburg isolated on
an inland lake. The Government has since, at heavy expense, diverted
the Yazoo outflow past the city and restored the harbor. There are
beautiful views and romantic glens in the Walnut Hills, with many
traces of the old fortifications, while a favorite drive is to the
extensive National Cemetery, where seventeen thousand soldiers' graves
recall the terrific conflicts of the Civil War.
NATCHEZ TO NEW ORLEANS.
When the Sieur de la Salle made his voyage of exploration down the
great Father of Waters from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of
Mexico, he found in the spring of 1682 an interesting Indian
settlement on the eastern bank a hundred miles below Vicksburg. This
settlement was under a bluff rising a hundred and fifty feet above the
river. Later, in 1699, Commander d'Iberville examined the Mississippi
delta, and having founded Fort St. Louis at Biloxi, heard of these
Indians, sought their friendship, and in 1700 came up and established
a trading-post at their village under the bluff. He described them as
numbering twelve hundred warriors, living in nine contiguous villages,
ruled by a chief of the "family of the suns," their highest caste, and
called the Natchez Indians, the word meaning "the hurrying men,
running as in war." The French kept up communication with them, and
regarded the tribe as the noblest of the many with whom they had been
brought in contact in America. These Indians had a religious creed and
ceremonies not unlike the "Fire Worshippers" of Persia. In their
"Temple of the Sun," the priests kept the sacred fire constantly
burning on the altar, their tradition being that the fire came
originally from heaven and had always been maintained. In 1713 the
Sieur de Bienville, who had succeeded his brother, d'Iberville, built
Fort Rosalie alongside the landing, and around it grew a town which
was the beginning of the city of Natchez. Unfortunately, just about
this time the Indians' sacred fire accidentally went out, and
attributing this to the coming of the white men, they became
dissatisfied and conflicts arose. There were repeated fights, and in
1729 they swooped down upon the settlement and massacred the French.
The following year troops came up from New Orleans, attacked and
scattered them, burning their villages, and the tribe ultimately
disappeared, the last small remnant of half-breed descendants
remaining in Texas until recently, when they joined the Creeks and
Cherokees. Now the city of Natchez has its business portion along the
narrow stretch of river-bank in front of the bluff, where some traces
yet remain of the earthworks of the old French fort. The greater part
of the city, however, is on the bluff, where the brow of the hill is a
wide-spreading park giving a splendid outlook. Also on the bluff is a
National Cemetery filled with soldiers' graves, the sad memorial of
the War. There is a large river-trade at Natchez, and twelve thousand
population, and in the cotton-shipping season, business along the
levee is very active.
About seventy miles below, the Red River flows in, the last of the
great tributaries of the Mississippi. This stream is over fifteen
hundred miles long, draining a region of a hundred thousand square
miles, and gets its name from the red-colored sediment its waters
bring down. It originates in the extensive "Staked Plain" of northern
Texas, the "Lone Star State," its sources being at twenty-five hundred
feet elevation. Its flow is eastward, forming the Texan northern
boundary on the border of Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, and then
it turns south near the twin city of Texarkana, which stands on both
sides of the line between Texas and Arkansas. Coming into Louisiana it
passes Shreveport, a city of fifteen thousand people, with a large
trade in cotton and cattle, and then crosses the state to the
Mississippi. The special and curious feature of the Red River is the
formation of rafts. Its upper shores are heavily timbered, and vast
numbers of trees are engulfed by the current washing out the banks in
times of freshet, and they accumulate lower down, where the speed of
the water slackens. These rafts are formed many miles long, growing by
additions to the up-stream side, while the logs decay and are
gradually floated off and broken up on the lower extremity. This makes
the obstruction steadily move up-stream. In 1854, the great raft fifty
miles above Shreveport extended thirteen miles up the river and was
accumulating at the rate of nearly two miles annually. In colonial
times this raft was said to have been two hundred miles lower down the
river. Vegetation had taken root on the older portions, thus making a
floating forest, and the retardation of the waters above made a lake
over twenty miles long. In 1873, when the Government attacked it and
opened a navigable channel, this raft had grown to thirty-two miles
length, and the opening of the channel lowered the upper retarded
waters fifteen feet. Snag-boats have since patrolled the Red River,
pulling out thousands of trees every year, and breaking up the rafts,
to maintain navigation. The lower course of Red River is very crooked
and sluggish, through swamps and lowlands, and near its mouth part of
the current, particularly in times of freshet, is diverted into
Atchafalaya River, which flows for about two hundred miles southward
directly to the Gulf of Mexico. This stream is said to have originally
been the outlet of Red River to the Gulf, and such it seems again
coming to be, the Government having a very serious problem in dealing
with it. The Mississippi River in its earlier vagaries developed a
bend towards the west, which struck Red River, thus making it a
tributary, the former channel silting up. It was then named
Atchafalaya, meaning the "lost river." To improve navigation, some
time ago this old channel was opened, when to the general
astonishment, the Atchafalaya began absorbing the Red River waters and
developing a large river, which now carries a current more than
one-third the volume of the Mississippi, and as they all run together
at high-water stages, there is a fear that the whole Mississippi may
at some time conclude to go into the Atchafalaya, thus leaving New
Orleans on an arm of the sea. Extensive Government works are in
progress to prevent this diversion and maintain the old conditions.
Below Red River, the Mississippi is all in Louisiana, its width barely
a half-mile, and its depth very great, in many places one to two
hundred feet, necessary to carry the vast flow of water. The banks are
throughout protected by levees, and on the last bluff rising alongside
the river, on the eastern bank, is the Louisiana state capital, Baton
Rouge, a quaint old city with ancient French and Spanish houses,
spreading over the bluff fifty feet above the water. There is a
population of about ten thousand, and overlooking the river are the
State House and the buildings of the Louisiana State University.
Below Baton Rouge, both banks of the Mississippi are bordered by
attractive gardens and extensive plantations, with sections of forest,
sombre moss-draped trees and rich vegetation, the whole of the
"coast," as the lower river banks are familiarly called, being lavish
in the display of semi-tropical luxuriance. The voyage down, skirting
the low shores and levees for a hundred and twenty miles, is most
picturesque, as the windings of the river make pleasant views.
Finally, a grand sweeping bend is rounded, where the city of New
Orleans is spread out upon both banks, the streets and buildings
stretching far inland upon the lowlands behind the great protective
embankments.
THE CRESCENT CITY.
The Spanish in the sixteenth century made various evanescent
explorations of the Gulf coast and the entrances to the Mississippi,
but never gained a permanent foothold. La Salle descended the great
river to its mouth in 1682, took possession of the country for France
and named it Louisiana, in honor of his King Louis XIV. The first
colony planted in the Province by the French was at Biloxi Bay on the
Gulf coast, about eighty miles northeast of New Orleans, in February,
1699, by Commander d'Iberville. Biloxi is now a quiet town of five
thousand people, having a good trade and some manufactures. A short
distance to the westward is Beauvoir, which was the home of the
Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, where he died in 1889; and
about ten miles farther westward is the extensive Bay St. Louis, where
at Pass Christian is one of the most frequented pleasure-resorts on
the Gulf coast. The French built a fort at Biloxi, and for years
d'Iberville and his younger brother, the Sieur de Bienville,
maintained their colony under serious difficulties, de Bienville
finally deciding to change the location, and removing to Mobile bay.
After considerable exploration, however, he determined upon a
permanent location within the Mississippi River, and entering the
passes in 1718 he ascended to where he found the most eligible fast
land and founded the colony of New Orleans, naming it in honor of the
then Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans. Thus began the city, which
in 1721, being then described as "a village of trappers and gold
hunters," was made the capital of the French royal Province of
Louisiana. In 1732 it had about five thousand population, and after
the transfer of sovereignty to the United States it was chartered a
city in 1804, then having ten thousand. There are now two hundred and
seventy-five thousand people in New Orleans.
This noted city is about one hundred and seven miles from the Gulf of
Mexico, and the older portion was built around the outer curve of a
grand crescent-shaped river bend, which gave it the popular
designation of the "Crescent City." It afterwards grew far up stream,
and stretched around another reverse bend, so that now the river
passes through in form much like the letter S. The surface descends
from the river by gentle slope towards a marshy region in the rear,
and is several feet below the level of high water, the levee being a
strong embankment about fourteen feet high and fifteen feet wide on
the surface, effectually protecting from overflow. Its magnificent
position near the mouth of the river, where an enormous interior
commerce, coming by railroad and steamboat, has to be transhipped to
ocean-going vessels, has made the prosperity of the city. Its event of
chief memory is the battle of January 8, 1815, when General Andrew
Jackson defeated the British under General Pakenham. The battlefield
was at Chalmette in the southern suburbs, on ground stretching from
the Mississippi River bank back about a mile to the cypress swamps.
The war with England had already been ended by a peace concluded at
Ghent December 24, 1814, but neither side then knew of it. The British
advanced from the eastward to attack the city, and a hastily
constructed line of breastworks formed of cotton bales was thrown up,
behind which Jackson's men were stationed to receive the attack. The
result was a most disastrous defeat, Pakenham, his second in command
and twenty-six hundred men falling, while the American loss was only
one hundred. A marble monument on the field commemorates the victory,
and a National Cemetery, with many graves of soldiers fallen in the
Civil War, now occupies a portion of the ground. In the Civil War, in
April, 1862, Admiral Farragut ran his fleet past the forts commanding
the river at the head of the Passes, and appearing before the city
compelled its surrender, when it was occupied by the accompanying land
forces under General Butler.
There is, in the older town, so much of characteristic French and
Spanish survival, that New Orleans is a most interesting and
picturesque city, though it has not very much to show in the way of
elaborate architecture. The streets have generally French or Spanish
names, and there is a distinctive French quarter inhabited by Creoles,
where the buildings have walls of adobé and stucco, inner courts,
tiled roofs, arcades and balconies, the whole region being lavishly
supplied with semi-tropical plants. The chief business thoroughfare,
Canal Street, is at right-angles to the river bank, and borders the
French quarter. The levee for over six miles is devoted to the
shipping, and in its gathering of ocean vessels and river steamboats,
loading or unloading, is a most animated place, impressing the
observer with the idea that tributary to this great mart of trade is
the richest agricultural valley in the world. The hero of New Orleans,
General Andrew Jackson, has his equestrian statue in Jackson Square,
which was the old-time Place d'Armes, and adjoining is the French
Cathedral of St. Louis, built in the eighteenth century, but since
considerably altered. The chief institution of learning is Tulane
University, having fine buildings and a thousand students, the
benefaction of a prominent citizen. In Lafayette Square there is a
statue of John McDonough, whose legacy for school-houses has built and
equipped thirty spacious buildings, accommodating twenty thousand
pupils. Around Lafayette Square are various public edifices and
churches.
New Orleans has two fine parks, the City Park and Audubon Park, both
displaying collections of live oaks and magnolias, which are
picturesque. The city cemeteries also have many good trees and are
attractive and peculiar. The soil being semi-fluid at a depth of two
or three feet, nearly all the tombs are above ground, some being
costly and beautiful structures. Most of them, however, are buildings
composed of cells placed one above another to the height of seven or
eight feet. The cell is only large enough to receive the coffin, and
as soon as the funeral is over, it is hermetically bricked up at the
narrow entrance. These cells are called "ovens," and bear tablets
appropriately inscribed. The Cypress Grove Cemetery, near the City
Park, is one of the most interesting. In Greenwood Cemetery, near by,
is a monument to the Confederate dead, and General Albert Sidney
Johnston is interred in Metairie Cemetery, which also has his
equestrian statue. In some cases the graves are in earthen mounds,
while occasionally, where the interment is in the ground, the
grave-digging is so arranged as to be completed just as the funeral
arrives, and the coffin thus gets placed and covered before there is
time for much water to ooze into the grave. The most uniquely
picturesque sight in the city is furnished by the old French Market,
near the levee, in the early morning, when business is in full tide,
and the mixed population in peculiar costume and language is seen to
advantage. A favorite resort of the people is Lake Pontchartrain, five
miles north, the spacious inland sea covering nearly a thousand square
miles, to which fine shell roads lead.
THE LEVEES AND THE DELTA.
The whole country around New Orleans, and indeed the entire region
adjacent to the Mississippi and its bayous, would be overflowed in
times of freshet were it not for the elaborate systems of levees,
which are a special feature of the whole lower Mississippi Valley. The
work of constructing these extensive embankments began at the
foundation of the infant city of New Orleans, when a dyke a mile long
was projected to protect the settlement from overflow, and it was
built soon afterwards. In 1770 the settlements extended thirty miles
above and twenty miles below the city, the plantations being
protected by levees. By 1828, the levees, though in many places
insufficient, had become continuous nearly to the mouth of Red River.
The methods of construction were various, and the authorities
conflicting, but the Government took hold of the work in 1850,
beginning by giving the States the swamplands to provide a fund for
reclamation. When the Civil War began, the levees extended a thousand
miles along the river, and as far north as the State of Missouri.
During the war the system fell into decay, and afterwards much work of
restoration was necessary. The Mississippi River Commission now has
charge, under comprehensive methods, and large sums are devoted to the
purpose, aggregating over $4,000,000 annually from the General
Government and the States, there being continuous lines of levees from
Memphis nearly to the delta below New Orleans. Were the river left to
itself, in most of this region during the spring floods it would
overflow the banks by several feet, this being, however, prevented by
these massive earth entrenchments, through which there nevertheless
often breaks a destructive crevasse. The sediment brought down by the
river has been deposited most abundantly upon the banks, making their
front the highest surface, so that there is a gradual descent inland
and back from the river of about four feet to the mile. During the
floods, an observer standing alongside the levee has the water in the
river running high above him, and when the levee breaks the
bottom-lands are soon extensively overflowed. The estimate is that
these lands, reclaimed and protected by the levees, embrace thirty
thousand square miles of the most fertile soil in the world, about
one-sixth of it being under cultivation; and that there are altogether
twenty-six hundred miles of levees along the great river, and the
adjunct tributary bayous, lakes and other water-courses. For nine
months the water stage is low, so that very little attention is given
it, but when the spring comes, the melted snows of the Rockies and the
torrential rains come down usually in conjunction, bringing an
enormous flood, that rushes along, filling the river to the tops of
the embankments. Processes of decay and weakening are always going
on--rats and mice have their burrows, and millions of crawfish, with
claws like chisels, riddle the levees with holes. Then in some
unexpected place the dreaded alarm is sounded that the bank is giving
way and a crevasse impends. The water-soaked bank shows fissures and
help is implored--bells are rung, fleet horsemen arouse the
neighborhood, the people assemble and try to stop the break. But the
crumbling levee soon gives way, and the swollen and muddy current
pours through with a roar like Niagara, the waters spreading afar over
the lowlands, and thus by reducing the stream-level bringing relief to
the river, but converting the adjacent region for many miles into a
turbid lake and ruining the crops.
Below New Orleans, as the river is descended, the thick forest
vegetation along the banks gradually disappears, giving place to vast
expanses of marsh and isolated patches of fast land bearing stunted
trees. The river banks grow less defined, and are finally lost in what
appears to be an interminable marsh with many waterways. This leads to
the delta, gradually built up from the sediment deposited by the
river, and demonstrating the eternal conflict and gradual encroachment
of the land upon the sea. Through the ages, this delta, steadily
constructed by the river, has been protruded into the Gulf of Mexico,
far beyond the general coast-line, and it is slowly advancing year
after year from the accumulated deposits. The delta divides into the
various channels or "passes" by which the waters seek the sea. These
are at first bordered by shore-lines of mud, which lower down dissolve
into consecutive lines of coarse grass growing from beneath the watery
surface, and then they are discernible only to the practiced eye of
the pilot by what appears to be a regular current flowing along in the
universal waste. This delta covers an area of fourteen thousand square
miles, and it divides into four separate passes, which are hardly much
more than outlet currents through the expanse of waters and marsh,
thus excavating deeper and navigable channels. There are lighthouses
at the entrances, and just inside the Northeast Pass is a spacious
mud-bank known as the Balize, where there once was a colony of
wreckers, but now are pleasant residences. Above the head of the
delta, and about seventy miles below New Orleans, located in eligible
positions at a bend, are Forts St. Philip and Jackson, the defensive
works of the river entrance, and below them the main ship channel goes
out to the Gulf through the South Pass, where the bar has been
deepened through the effective scouring produced by the famous Eads
Jetties on either side--one over two miles long and the other a mile
and a half. These jetties cost $5,000,000, and they maintain a channel
thirty feet deep. The twin lights marking their extremities can be
regarded as indicating as nearly as may be the mouth of the great
river, and beyond is the broad expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. Vast as
is the enormous outflow brought down by the Father of Waters, the
drainage of the whole broad centre of the Continent thus poured into
the Gulf, yet it has no appreciable effect upon the ocean into which
it flows. The Gulf easily swallows up all the Mississippi waters in a
way that reminds of Rossetti's dirge:
"Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking, thirsteth still"
THE ROCKIES AND PACIFIC COAST.
XXI.
THE ROCKIES AND PACIFIC COAST.
The Lone Star State -- The Sunset Route -- Port Arthur --
Galveston -- Houston -- Dallas -- Fort Worth -- Great Staked
Plain -- Austin -- San Antonio -- The Alamo -- David
Crockett -- James Bowie -- Sam Houston -- Cattle Ranches --
Rio Grande River -- El Paso -- Arizona -- Tucson --
Phoenix -- Prehistoric Cities -- Yuma -- Canyons of the
Colorado -- Colorado Desert -- Southern California -- San
Bernardino Valley -- San Diego -- Coronado Beach -- The
Early Missions -- Climate and Scenery -- Los Angeles --
Santa Monica Bay -- San Gabriel Valley -- Santa Barbara --
Monterey Bay -- Del Monte -- Santa Cruz -- Santa Clara
Valley -- San José -- Lick Observatory -- San Joaquin Valley
-- Stockton -- Gold Mining -- The Big Trees -- Yosemite
Valley -- Rocky Mountains -- The Atchison Route -- Indian
Territory -- Oklahoma -- Raton Pass -- Las Vegas -- Santa Fé
-- Albuquerque -- Mesa Encantada -- Flagstaff -- Mojave
Desert -- The Union Pacific Route -- Cheyenne -- Colorado --
Denver -- Boulder Canyon -- Clear Creek Canyon -- Colorado
Springs -- Pike's Peak -- Manitou -- Garden of the Gods --
Pueblo -- Veta Pass -- Cripple Creek -- Leadville -- Grand
Canyon of the Arkansas -- Marshall Pass -- Black Canyon of
the Gunnison -- Wyoming Fossils -- Utah -- Echo and Weber
Canyons -- Ogden -- Great Salt Lake -- Salt Lake City -- The
Mormons -- Promontory Point -- Nevada -- Virginia City --
Comstock Lode -- Lake Tahoe -- Donner Lake -- Sacramento --
The Northern Pacific Route -- Butte -- Anaconda Mine --
Helena -- Idaho -- Spokane -- Columbia River -- Oregon --
Snake River Canyon -- Shoshoné Falls -- The Dalles --
Cascade Locks -- The Great Northern Route -- The Canadian
Pacific Route -- Regina -- Moose Jaw -- Medicine Hat --
Calgary -- Banff -- Mount Stephen -- Kicking Horse Pass --
Rogers Pass -- Mount Sir Donald -- Glacier House -- Eagle
Pass -- Great Shuswap Lake -- Kamloops -- Thompson Canyon
-- Fraser Canyon -- Vancouver -- Victoria -- Gulf of Georgia
-- Alaska -- Fort Wrangell -- Sitka -- Juneau -- Treadwell
Mine -- Muir Glacier -- Lynn Canal -- Chilkoot and Chilkat
-- Skaguay and Dyea -- The Yukon River -- The Klondyke --
St. Michaels -- Cape Nome -- Puget Sound -- Port Townsend --
Everett -- Seattle -- Tacoma -- Mount Tacoma -- Mount St.
Helens -- Portland -- Crater Lake -- Mount Shasta -- Benicia
-- Mare Island -- Oakland -- University of California --
Menlo Park -- Leland Stanford, Jr., University -- San
Francisco -- Point Lobos -- The Golden Gate.
THE LONE STAR STATE.
Westward from the Mississippi River the "Sunset Route" to the Pacific
leads across the sugar plantations of Louisiana. This Southern Pacific
railway passes many bayous having luxuriant growth of bordering live
oaks, magnolias and cypress, hung with festoons of Spanish moss,
crosses the Atchafalaya River at Morgan City, and beyond, skirts along
the picturesque and winding Bayou Teche in a region originally peopled
by colonies of French Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia. Ultimately
the route crosses Calcasieu River at Lake Charles, and thirty-eight
miles beyond, goes over the Sabine River into the "Lone Star State" of
Texas, the largest in the Union. The name of Texas comes from a tribe
of Indians found there when La Salle made the first European
settlement on the coast at Fort St. Louis on Lavaca River in 1685, but
after the Spanish occupation in the eighteenth century the country was
long known as the New Philippines, that being the official
designation in their records. At the mouth of Sabine River is Sabine
Lake, where Port Arthur has been established as a prosperous railway
terminal, having access to the Gulf by a ship canal with terminating
jetties, deepening the channel outlet to the sea. Farther along the
coast is Galveston, the chief Texan seaport, built on the northeastern
extremity of Galveston Island, which spreads for thirty miles in front
of the spacious Galveston Bay, covering nearly five hundred miles
surface. The entrance from the sea is obstructed by a bar through
which the Government excavated at great expense a channel, flanked by
stone jetties five miles long. It is a low-lying city with wide,
straight streets, embowered in luxuriant tropical vegetation, while
the equable winter temperature makes it a charming health-resort. A
magnificent sea-beach spreads along the Gulf front of the island for
many miles. Galveston, in September, 1900, was swept by a most
terrific cyclone and tidal wave, destroying thousands of lives and a
vast number of buildings.
Texas was a Province of Mexico, under Spanish and afterwards Mexican
rule, and its many attractions in the early nineteenth century brought
a large accession of colonists to the eastern portions from the
adjacent parts of the United States. The Americans became so numerous
that in 1830 the Mexican Congress prohibited further immigration, and
the result was a revolt in 1835, the organization of a Provisional
Government, a war which ended in the defeat of the Mexicans in the
battle of San Jacinto in 1836, and the final independence of Texas.
The people then sought annexation to the United States, but the State
was not admitted until 1845, the Mexican War following. Two men of
that time were prominent in Texas, Stephen F. Austin, who brought the
first large colony from the United States settling on the Colorado and
Brazos Rivers, and Sam Houston, who, after being Governor of
Tennessee, migrated to Texas, led the revolt, commanded their army,
and was made the first President of the independent State. The latter
has his name preserved in the active city of Houston on Buffalo Bayou,
a tributary of Galveston Bay, and about fifty miles northwest of
Galveston. Houston is a busy railway centre, handling large amounts of
cotton, sugar and timber, and is rapidly expanding, having sixty
thousand people.
The Trinity River is the chief affluent of Galveston Bay, flowing down
from Northern Texas, and having upon its banks another busy railway
centre, Dallas, with fifty thousand people and an extensive trade.
About thirty miles above, on Trinity River, is the old Indian frontier
post of Fort Worth, now a town of forty thousand population and the
headquarters of the cattle-raisers of Northern Texas. For many miles
in all directions are the extensive cattle ranges, and to the north
and west spreads the "Great Staked Plain," a vast plateau elevated
nearly five thousand feet above the sea, covering some fifty thousand
square miles, and being surrounded by a bordering escarpment of
erosion to the lower levels, much resembling palisades. The stakes
driven by the early Spaniards to mark their way are said to have given
this plain its name, and it has now become an almost limitless cattle
pasturage. When Austin's American colony settled on the Colorado River
west of Houston, his name was given the town which was ultimately
selected as the State Capital, where there are now twenty thousand
people who look out upon the magnificent view of the Colorado
Mountains. Here is the Texas State University with seven hundred and
fifty students, and one of the finest State Capitols in the country, a
splendid red granite structure, which was built by a syndicate in
exchange for a grant of three million acres of land, the building
occupying seven years in construction and costing $3,500,000. Two
miles above the city an enormous dam seventy feet high encloses the
waters of Colorado River for the water supply and manufacturing power,
and thus makes Lake McDonald, twenty-five miles long. A heavy storm
and flood in the spring of 1900 broke this dam and let out the lake,
causing great loss of life and damage in the city.
Eighty miles southwest of Austin is the ancient city of San Antonio,
known as the "cradle of Texas liberty," a Spanish town upon the San
Antonio and San Pedro Rivers, small streams dividing it into
irregular parts, the former receiving the latter and flowing into the
Gulf at Espiritu Santo Bay. There are sixty thousand people in San
Antonio, of many races, chiefly Americans, Mexicans and Germans, and
it is a leading wool, cattle, horse, mule and cotton market. The
Spaniards penetrated into this region in the latter part of the
seventeenth century and established one of their usual joint
religious-military posts among the Indians upon the plan of
colonization then in vogue. The Presidio or military station was
called San Antonio de Bexar, while during the early eighteenth century
there were founded various religious Missions, the chief being by
Franciscan monks, the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. There are four
other Missions in and near the city, dating from that early period,
their ancient buildings partly restored, but some of them also
considerably in ruins. To the eastward of San Antonio River was built
in a grove of the alamo or cottonwood trees in 1744 a low, strong,
thick-walled church of adobé for the Franciscans, called from its
surroundings the Alamo. When the Texans revolted, they held San
Antonio as an outpost with a garrison of one hundred and forty-five
men, commanded by Colonel James Bowie, the famous duellist and
inventor of the "bowie knife," who was originally from Louisiana.
Bowie fell ill of typhoid fever, and Colonel Travis took command.
Among the garrison was the eccentric David Crockett of Tennessee, who
had been a member of Congress, and joined them as a volunteer. General
Santa Anna marched with a large Mexican army against them, arriving
February 22, 1836, and the little garrison retired within the church
of the Alamo, which they defended against four thousand Mexicans in a
twelve days' siege. The final assault was made at daylight, March 6th,
a lodgment was effected, and until nine o'clock a battle was fought
from room to room within the church, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict
at short range, and not ceasing until every Texan was killed; but this
was not until two thousand three hundred Mexicans had fallen. Upon the
memorial of this terrible contest, at the Texas State Capital, is the
inscription: "Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo
had none." This butchery caused a thrill of horror throughout the
United States. "Remember the Alamo" became the watchword of the
Texans, much aid was sent them, and the succor, coming from the desire
to avenge the massacre, contributed largely to their ability to defeat
the Mexicans in the subsequent decisive battle on San Jacinto River,
down near Galveston Bay, which was fought in April. The old Church of
the Alamo, since restored, is preserved as a national monument on the
spacious Alamo plaza. The name of Houston, the Texan leader, is given
to Fort Sam Houston, the United States military post on a hill north
of San Antonio. The old Alamo is the shrine of Texas; and as visitors
stroll around the place they are weirdly told how the spirits of the
departed heroes, Crockett, Bowie, Travis and others, when the storms
rage at night about the ancient building, wander through the sacristy
with the heavy measured tread of armed troopers. It was in the midst
of a storm that the Mexicans broke through a barred window and thus
gained entrance in the siege. On the southern border of San Antonio
are the extensive Fair Grounds, where Roosevelt's Rough Riders,
largely recruited from the neighboring Texan ranches, were organized
for the Spanish War in 1898. The most extensive Texas cattle ranches
are south and west of San Antonio, the largest of them, King's Ranch,
near the Gulf to the southward, covering seven hundred thousand acres,
and being stocked with three thousand brood mares and a hundred
thousand cattle.
ARIZONA.
The railway from San Antonio goes westward across the cattle ranges to
the Rio Pecos, flowing for eight hundred miles down from the Rockies
in a region largely reclaimed by irrigation, and then falling into the
Rio Grande del Norte, the national boundary between Texas and Mexico.
This noble stream, the Spanish "Grand River of the North," comes out
of Colorado and New Mexico, and is eighteen hundred miles long. The
Southern Pacific Railway crosses the Pecos on a fine cantilever bridge
three hundred and twenty-eight feet high, and reaches the Rio Grande a
short distance beyond, following it up northwest and passing the
Apache Mountains, where at Paisano it crosses the summit grade at five
thousand and eight feet elevation, the highest pass on this route to
the Pacific coast. It finally reaches El Paso on the upper Rio Grande,
a town of twelve thousand people, having on the Mexican bank of the
river, with a long wooden bridge between, the twin town of Juarez, or
El Paso del Norte, the road over the bridge being the chief route of
trade into Mexico. The original Spanish explorer, Juan de Onate, named
this crossing "the Pass of the North" in 1598, and after long waiting
it has finally developed into an active town in cattle raising and
silver mining, and also a health-resort, its balmy atmosphere being
most attractive. The muddy river by its periodic inundations has made
a very fertile intervale, which has a population of sixty-five
thousand, and here are seen picturesque Mexican figures, the men in
peaked _sombreros_ and scarlet _zarapes_, and the women with blue
_rebozas_. Beyond, the route crosses the southwest corner of New
Mexico and enters Arizona, passing amid the mountain ranges to Tucson,
the chief town of the Territory, having six thousand people, a quaint
and ancient Spanish settlement, which has considerable Mexican trade.
It was originally an appanage to the old Spanish mission of St.
Xavier, nine miles southward, and it now thrives on its cattle trade,
mining and magnificent climate, being also the location of the
Territorial University.
To the northwest, in the well-irrigated valley of Salt River, is
Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, with fifteen thousand population,
the irrigation systems having produced great fertility in the adjacent
region. The Salt River is a tributary of the Gila, the latter flowing
out westward to the Colorado. In these Arizona valleys have been
disclosed the remains of several prehistoric cities, chiefly located
on a broad and sloping plain beginning at the confluence of the Salt
with the Gila, and stretching down to the Mexican boundary. At Casa
Grande is a famous ruin of a prehistoric temple with enormous adobé
walls, the Government having made a reservation for its protection.
These people were worshippers of the sun, and there have been
discovered the remains of many towns with large population, the Gila
Valley for ninety square miles disclosing these ruins, which are
relics of the Stone age. Irrigation canals made by these prehistoric
people, the oldest in the world, are also found throughout the region.
Extensive explorations of these ancient cities have been made, and
several have been named, among them Los Acequias, Los Muertos and Los
Animos, the last being the largest, and there being strong evidence
that it was destroyed by an earthquake which killed many thousands of
the inhabitants. The railway follows the Gila Valley westward to its
confluence with the Colorado, and here at the California boundary is
Yuma, another of the early Spanish missions to the Indians, situated
just north of the Mexican border, the Yuma Indians still living on a
reservation adjoining the Colorado, their name meaning "the sons of
the river." This town has its tragic history, for in 1781 the Indians
made a savage raid upon the mission, destroyed the buildings and
massacred the missionary priests.
The Colorado and its tributaries drain nearly the whole of Arizona,
and it is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its head
branches have their sources in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, uniting in
the latter State, flowing four hundred miles across Arizona and
seventy miles into Mexico to discharge through a delta into the Gulf
of California. The river and most of its tributaries in Arizona pass
through canyons that are among the wonders of the world, exposing to
view geological strata of all the formations in their regular places
to the thickness of twenty-five thousand feet. At first, the Colorado
flows out of Utah and south into Arizona for one hundred and eighty
miles, passing through the Marble Canyon, so called from the limestone
walls, nearly four thousand feet deep. It then turns westward by
irregular course, flowing nearly two hundred and fifty miles through
the Grand Canyon, the most stupendous in existence, and having at
places six thousand feet depth and walls spreading at the surface five
or six miles apart. These huge walls are terraced and carved into
myriads of pinnacles and towers, often brilliantly colored, and far
down in the bottom the river is seen like a silvery thread of foam.
Major Powell, who first explored it in 1869, went through in a boat.
He calls it "the most profound chasm known on the globe," and believes
the river was running there before the mountains were formed, and that
the canyon was made by the erosion of the water acting simultaneously
with the slow upheaval of the rocks. The river has a rapid flow in the
canyon, winding generally through a lower chasm and having a descent
of five to twelve feet to the mile, sometimes with placid reaches, but
frequently plunging down rapids filled with rocks. The surrounding
country is largely volcanic, with lava-beds and extinct craters. When
the visitor first approaches the brink of the great chasm, he is
almost appalled with the sight. There seem to be scores of deep
ravines and enclosed mountains, the main wall opposite being miles
away, and the intervening space filled with peaks and ridges of every
imaginable shape and color, rising from the abyss below. There is a
trail down the side of the canyon, a steep and narrow path winding
along the face of the Grand View Gorge, giving startling glimpses into
ravines thousands of feet deep, and disclosing the massive
magnificence of this enormous abyss. Down goes the trail, one gorge
opening below another until the verge of the final gorge is reached,
in which the river runs at a depth of a thousand feet farther.
Everything is desolate, the vegetation sparse, and a few stunted trees
appearing, while the river, which seemed from above to be only a far
distant silvery streak down below, is expanded by the nearer view into
large proportions. This Grand Canyon of the Colorado is one of the
most wonderful constructions of nature in its stupendous size and
extraordinary character; with the myriads of pinnacles, towers,
castles, walls, chasms and profound depths it contains and the
gorgeous coloring given most of the surfaces. It is among the greatest
of the attractions that America, the land of wonders, presents to the
seeker after the picturesque.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Beyond the California boundary the Southern Pacific Railway traverses
the broad Colorado desert. This is a barren, sandy wilderness, growing
nothing but yuccas and cactus, and is depressed far below the
sea-level. It is an inland salt-water lake that has mostly dried up,
the belief being that it was formerly an extension of the Gulf of
California. The railway route beyond passes between the San Jacinto
and San Bernardino Mountains, crossing the latter. These peaks rise
over eleven thousand feet, and beyond is the pleasant fruit-growing
San Bernardino Valley, originally settled by the Mormons in 1851. To
the southward is Riverside, in the fertile district where the seedless
navel oranges are successfully cultivated, the groves giving an
attractive exhibition of orange-growing. Here is the famous Magnolia
Avenue, one hundred and thirty feet wide and ten miles long, with its
double rows of pepper trees, and extending all the way through orange
groves. In its park is one of the finest cacti collections in
existence. Adjacent is Redlands, also a flourishing orange-growing
city, its sidewalks bordered by stately palms, rose-bushes, pepper
trees and century plants, while everywhere are orange trees in their
perpetual livery of brilliant green. Around it encircle the high San
Bernardino Mountains, thoroughly protecting the fertile valley. To the
southward the route then runs out to the Pacific Ocean bound to
Southern California, and following down the coast near San Juan passes
Dana's Point, over which, in the early Californian days, the hides
were thrown for shipment, as narrated by Dana in _Two Years Before the
Mast_. Ultimately it reaches the grand bay of San Diego, near the
Mexican boundary, which, next to San Francisco, is the best harbor on
the Pacific coast.
Here, spreading along the shores of the beautiful bay, is the ancient
Spanish town of San Diego, long sleepy, but lately enjoying a "boom"
when it found itself becoming a popular watering-place. To the
northward is the old Mission of San Diego, the first settlement by
white men in California, noted for its prolific olive groves. In the
town of adobé houses lived "Ramona" of whom Helen Hunt Jackson has
written, and there are still preserved here the original church bells
sent out from Spain to the colony. The outer arm of San Diego Bay is
Coronado Beach, a narrow tongue of sand, stretching twelve miles
northward, and ending in spacious expansions known as the North and
South Beaches. Upon the South Beach is the famous watering-place of
Coronado, with its great hotel alongside the ocean, the tower
commanding an extensive view, and its spacious surrounding
flower-gardens being magnificently brilliant. There are Botanical
Gardens, a Museum and an interesting ostrich farm, with railways for
miles along the pleasant shores, and at Point Loma are the lighthouses
guarding the entrance from the sea, the uppermost, elevated five
hundred feet, being the highest lighthouse in the world. Down near the
Mexican boundary is the suburb of National City, surrounded by olive
groves, and the visitors sometimes cross over the border to visit the
curious Mexican village of Tia Juana, a name which being freely
translated means "Aunt Jane." Extensive irrigation works serve the
country around San Diego, and the great Sweetwater Dam, ninety feet
high, closing a gorge, makes one of the largest water reservoirs in
existence.
This wonderful land of California into which we have come has a name
the meaning of which is unknown. One Ordonez de Montalva in 1510
published a Spanish romance wherein he referred to the "island of
California, on the right hand of the Indies, very near the Terrestrial
Paradise." When Cortez conquered Mexico, his annalist, Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, gave this name, it is said in derision, about 1535, to the
lower peninsula of California, then supposed to be an island, it
having been discovered the previous year by the Spanish explorer
Ximenes. The Jesuit missionaries came in the seventeenth century to
the lower peninsula, and in the eighteenth century to California
proper. It is an enormous State, stretching nearly eight hundred miles
along the Pacific, and inland for a width of two hundred or more
miles. It is mainly a valley, between the Coast Range of mountains on
the west and the Sierra Nevada, meaning the "snowy saw-tooth
mountains," on the east. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers flow in
the central valley, which stretches north and south for five hundred
miles. To the southward the mountain ranges join, and below them is
the special and favored region of Southern California. When first
settled, there were established from San Diego up to Sonoma twenty-one
Jesuit Missions, whose ruins and old buildings are now found so
interesting, and these early establishments converted the Indians, of
whom it is said that the charming climate offered them no
inducements to develop savagery, so that when the conversion time came
they were easily made serfs for the Missions, and worked in a way that
few other Indians ever did. There are two California seasons, the
rainy and the dry, the former lasting from November to May, while
there is almost unchanging dry weather from May till October. The
rainy season, however, is not as in the tropics, where there are
deluges daily, but it means that then it will rain if ever, and there
are in fact days without rain at all. California is a land of climatic
attractiveness, where, as it has been well said, "it is always
afternoon." Through vast irrigation systems, despite the dry season,
much of the surface has been made a garden. Water runs everywhere
copiously down from the mountains, and the shrubbery of all parts of
the world has been brought hither and successfully grown. The region
presents an universal landscape of foliage and flowers, luxuriant
beyond imagination. In Southern California the wild flowers, of which
the golden poppy is one of the most prominent, are extraordinary in
their number, variety and brilliancy. "The greatest surprise of the
traveller," writes Charles Dudley Warner, "is that a region which is
in perpetual bloom and fruitage, where semi-tropical fruits mature in
perfection, and the most delicate flowers dazzle the eye with color
the winter through, should have on the whole a low temperature, a
climate never enervating, and one requiring a dress of woollen in
every month."
[Illustration: _Cloister of Mission, San Juan Capistrano_]
LOS ANGELES AND SAN JOAQUIN.
The metropolis of this land of sunshine, fruits and flowers, fifteen
miles back from the sea, is _La Puebla de la Nuestra Senora la Reina
de Los Angeles_, or "the City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels;" a
lengthy title which the matter-of-fact Americans some time ago happily
shortened into Los Angeles. From it Los Angeles River flows south to
the sea at San Pedro Bay. The Spaniards founded the town in 1781, but
it had only a sleepy existence until 1880, when the railways came
along, and it became a centre of the pleasure and health-resorts, and
the extensive fruit growing of Southern California, expanding so
rapidly that it has seventy thousand people. Originally, the houses
were of adobé, but now it has many fine buildings and a magnificent
development of residences, the whole city being embowered in luxuriant
vegetation. In the neighborhood are petroleum wells and asphalt
deposits, while the adjacent district has many irrigation canals. Down
on the ocean shore is San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, where the
harbor has been improved by a large outlay, and twenty miles away is
the beautiful mountainous island of Santa Catalina, a popular resort,
which is in reality an ocean mountain top. Santa Monica Bay, to the
southwest, is the coast bathing-place of Los Angeles, and near by is
the popular Redondo Beach, with its spacious Chautauqua Assembly
Building. Pasadena is a charming suburb of the city off to the
northeast, a perpetual garden and favorite place of residence. It is
in San Gabriel Valley, over which rises the great Sierra Madre Range,
eleven thousand feet high, the glossy green orange groves on its sides
gradually melting into the white snow-capped summits of this towering
mountain wall. A railway ascends Echo Mountain north of Pasadena, on
which is the Lowe Observatory. To the southeast is the old San Gabriel
Mission in the valley, surrounded by vineyards and orchards.
San Buenaventura was another Mission, and is now a health-resort at
the coast outlet of Ventura valley, and beyond is Santa Barbara, the
"American Mentone," one of the most charming California resorts. The
old Spanish Mission, with its towers and corridors, is famous, and was
built in 1786, being well-preserved and having a few of the Franciscan
monks yet in charge. A curiosity of the neighborhood is _La Parra
Grande_, the "Great Vine," having a trunk four feet in diameter and
covering a trellis sixty feet square, its annual product being eight
thousand pounds of grapes. Farther along the coast is the charming Bay
of Monterey, with the Spanish town of Monterey on its southern shore.
In 1770 the Mission of San Carlo de Monterey was founded here, and it
was the Mexican capital of California until the American conquest in
1846, then depending chiefly on a trade in tallow and hides. It has
not grown much since, however, and the old adobé buildings have not
undergone change in a half-century. It is now a popular resort, having
the noted Hotel Del Monte, the "Hotel of the Forest," located in
spacious and exquisite grounds, the park embracing seven thousand
acres. Upon the northern side of Monterey Bay is Santa Cruz, its chief
town, also a summer-resort, having a background made by the Santa Cruz
Mountains. This was a Mission founded in 1791, and five miles
northward is the Santa Cruz grove of big trees, containing a score of
redwoods or sequoias, of a diameter of ten feet or more, the largest
being twenty-three feet. Within a hollow in one of these trees General
Fremont encamped for several days in 1847. To the northward is the
prolific fruit region, the Santa Clara Valley, where Mission Santa
Clara was founded in 1777. The city of this valley is San José, with
twenty thousand people, distantly surrounded by mountains, and, like
all these places, a popular resort. The Calaveras Mountains are to the
eastward, and here, on Mount Hamilton, twenty-six miles southeast, is
the Lick Observatory, at forty-two hundred feet elevation. It was
founded by a legacy of $700,000 left by James Lick, of San Francisco,
and is attached to the University of California, being among the
leading observatories of the world. It has one of the largest and most
powerful refracting telescopes in existence, the object-glass being
thirty-six inches in diameter. Mr. Lick is buried in the foundation
pier of this great telescope which he erected. There is a magnificent
view from the Observatory, which is exceptionally well located, its
white buildings, shining in the sunlight, seen from afar.
Across the Coast Range of mountains, eastward from San José, is the
extensive San Joaquin Valley, noted as the "granary of California,"
two hundred miles long and thirty to seventy miles wide between the
mountain ranges. It produces almost limitless crops of grain, fruits
and wines. Through this great valley the San Joaquin River flows
northward, and the Sacramento River southward in another valley as
spacious, and uniting, they go out westward to San Francisco Bay. We
are told that in the days when the earth was forming, the sea waves
beat against the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, but ultimately the
waters receded, leaving the floor of this vast valley of central
California stretching nearly five hundred miles between the mountain
ranges. The first comers among the white men dug gold out of its
soils, but now they also get an enormous revenue from the prolific
crops. Railways traverse it in all directions. The chief city is
Stockton, at the head of navigation on the San Joaquin, a town of
twenty thousand people, having numerous factories. Here in the slopes
and gulches of the Sierras, stretching far away, were the first
gold-mines of California, when the discoveries of the "Forty-niners"
set the world agog. Here, at Jackson, was tapped the famous "Mother
Lode," the most continuous and richest of the three gold belts
extending along the slope of the Sierras, and so-called by the early
miners because they regarded it as the parent source of all the gold
found in the placers. This lode is in some parts a mile wide, and
extends a hundred miles, being here a series of parallel fissures
filled with gold-bearing quartz-veins, while farther south they unite
in a single enormous fissure. The mineral belts paralleling it on both
sides are rich in copper and gold. The country all about is a mining
region with prolific "diggings" everywhere, and smokes arising from
the stamp-mills at work reducing the ores. Here are Tuttletown and
Jackass Hill, the home of "Truthful James," and the localities made
familiar by Bret Harte and Mark Twain. Here is Carson Hill, there
having been picked up on its summit the largest gold-nugget ever found
in California, worth $47,000. What this gold-mining has meant is shown
by the results, aggregating since California first produced the metal
a total of nearly $1,350,000,000 gold given the world. As the San
Joaquin Valley is ascended, it develops its wealth of grain-fields,
orchards and vineyards, and displays the grand systems of irrigation
which have contributed to produce so much fertility.
Eastward from San Joaquin Valley are the famous groves of Big Trees,
the gigantic sequoias, which Emerson has appropriately called the
"Plantations of God." There are two forests of giants in Calaveras and
Mariposa Counties displaying these enormous trees, of which it is
significantly said that some were growing when Christ was upon the
earth. The Calaveras Grove, the northernmost, is at an elevation of
forty-seven hundred feet above the sea, upon a tract about two-thirds
of a mile long and two hundred feet wide, there being a hundred large
trees and many smaller. The tallest tree standing is the "Keystone
State," three hundred and twenty-five feet high and forty-five feet in
circumference. The "Mother of the Forest," denuded of its bark, is
three hundred and fifteen feet high and sixty-one feet girth, while
the "Father of the Forest," the biggest of all, is prostrate, and
measures one hundred and twelve feet in circumference. There are two
trees three hundred feet high, and many exceeding two hundred and
fifty feet, the bark sometimes being a foot and a half thick. This
grove, however, being less convenient, is not so much visited as the
Mariposa Grove to the southward. It is in Mariposa (the butterfly)
County, at sixty-five hundred feet elevation, and near the Yosemite
Valley. The tract of four square miles is a State Park, there being
two distinct forests a half-mile apart. The lower grove has a hundred
fine trees, the largest being the "Grizzly Giant," of ninety-four feet
circumference and thirty-one feet diameter, the main limb, at two
hundred feet elevation, being over six feet in diameter. The upper
grove contains three hundred and sixty trees, and the road between the
groves is tunnelled directly through one of them, which is
twenty-seven feet in diameter. Through this living tree, named
"Wawona," the stage-coach drives in a passage nearly ten feet wide.
These trees are not so high as in Calaveras Grove, but they are
usually of larger girth. The tallest is two hundred and seventy-two
feet, ten exceed two hundred and fifty feet, and three are over ninety
feet in circumference, while twenty are over sixty feet. Many of the
finest have been marred by fires. There are eight groves of these Big
Trees in California, these being the chief.
YOSEMITE VALLEY.
Into the San Joaquin flows Merced River, coming from the eastward down
out of the Sierras through the famous Yosemite Valley. Most of its
waters are diverted by irrigation canals leading for many miles over
the floor of the broad San Joaquin Valley. The road to the Yosemite
leads eastward up the slope, crosses the crest, and at Inspiration
Point, fifty-six hundred feet elevation, gives the first view, then
steeply descending to the river bank, it enters the western portal.
Yosemite is a corruption of the Indian word "A-hom-e-tae," which means
the "full-grown grizzly bear," and is supposed to have originally
been the name of an Indian chief. This magnificent canyon, on the
western slope of the Sierra Nevada, is a deep gorge eight miles long,
traversed by Merced River, its nearly level floor being about
thirty-eight hundred feet above the sea-level. The enclosing rocky and
almost vertical walls rise from three thousand to five thousand feet
above the river, the space between varying from a half-mile to two
miles. Over the valley floor winds the beautiful green current of the
diminutive Merced, bordered by trees and vegetation, the surface being
generally grass-grown. The high vertical walls, the small amount of
_débris_ at their foot, and the character of the Yosemite chasm
itself, have led the geologists to ascribe its formation not to
erosion or glacial action, but to a mighty convulsion in the granite
rocks, whereby part of them subsided along lines of fault-crossing
nearly at right-angles. The observer, standing on the floor, can see
no outlet anywhere, the almost perpendicular walls towering on high in
every direction.
The Valley is a Government Park, which also includes the watershed of
the streams flowing into it. Originally it was the home of the Digger
Indians, a tribe of Shoshonés, and a rather low type, of whom a few
still survive. It was first seen by white men in 1851, when a
detachment of troops pursuing these Indians came unexpectedly upon it.
The attractions soon became widely known, and visitors were numerous,
especially after the opening of the Pacific Railways. Entering the
Valley, the most striking object is its northwestern buttress, the
ponderous cliff El Capitan, rising thirty-three hundred feet, at a
very narrow part, its majestic form dominating the view. There are two
vertical mountain walls almost at right angles, these enormous bare
precipices facing west and south. On the opposite side, forming the
other portal, rise the imposing Cathedral Rocks, adjoined by the two
slender Cathedral Spires of splintered granite, nearly three thousand
feet high. Over these rocks on their western side pours the Bridal
Veil Fall, about seventy feet wide, and descending vertically six
hundred and thirty feet. As the winds often make the foaming column
flutter like a white veil, its title has been appropriately given.
Adjoining El Capitan descends the Ribbon Fall, or the Virgin's Tears,
falling two thousand feet, but losing much of its waters as the summer
advances. Eastward of El Capitan are the peaks called the Three
Brothers, the highest also named the Eagle Peak, rising three thousand
feet. To the eastward of this peak and in a recess near the centre of
the Valley are the Yosemite Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in
the world. Yosemite Creek, which comes over the brink with a breadth
of thirty-five feet, descends twenty-five hundred feet in three leaps.
It pours down a vertical wall, the Upper Fall descending nearly
fifteen hundred feet without a break, the column of water swaying as
the winds blow with marvellous grace of motion, the eddying mists
fading into light summer clouds above. The Middle Fall is a series of
cascades descending over six hundred feet, and the Lower Fall is four
hundred feet high. This is one of the grandest features of the Valley,
but its vigor, too, dwindles as the season advances. There is a high
and splendid ice cone formed at the foot of the Upper Fall in the
winter. Alongside, upon a projection called Yosemite Point, at over
thirty-two hundred feet elevation, is given one of the best views of
the famous Valley.
At the head of the Yosemite, it divides into three narrow tributary
canyons, each discharging a stream, which uniting form the Merced. The
northernmost is the Tenaya, and overshadowing it rises the huge North
Dome, more than thirty-seven hundred feet high, having as an outlying
spur the Washington Column. Opposite, and forming the eastern boundary
of the valley, is the South or Half Dome, of singular shape, towering
almost five thousand feet, and like El Capitan, at the other
extremity, being a most remarkable granitic cliff. Its top is
inaccessible, although once it was scaled by an adventurous explorer
by means of a rope attached to pegs driven into the rock. It is one of
the most extraordinarily formed mountains in existence, standing up
tall, gaunt and almost square against the sky, the dominating pinnacle
of the upper valley. Upon the southern side rises Glacier Point,
nearly thirty-four hundred feet, giving a splendid view over the
valley, having to the westward the Sentinel Dome, nearly forty-three
hundred feet high, ending in the conspicuous face of the Sentinel
Rock. Thus environed by vast cliffs, this grand valley displays
magnificent scenery. Within the upper canyons are also attractions,
that of the Merced River, the central gorge displaying the Vernal and
Nevada waterfalls. The Vernal Fall is seventy feet wide and descends
three hundred and fifty feet, having behind it the Cap of Liberty, a
picturesque cliff. Farther up the river is the Nevada Fall, a superb
cataract, having a slightly sloping descent of six hundred feet. Just
within Tenaya Canyon is the Mirror Lake, remarkable for its wonderful
reflections of the North and South Domes and adjacent mountains. Some
distance to the eastward is the Cloud's Rest, a peak rising more than
six thousand feet above the valley and nearly ten thousand feet above
sea-level, that is ascended for its splendid view of the surrounding
mountains and the enclosing walls of the valley, which can be plainly
seen throughout its length, stretching far away towards the setting
sun. This view of the Yosemite surpasses all others in its
comprehensiveness and grandeur.
THE ROCKIES
The great "backbone" of the American Continent is the Rocky Mountains,
and the summits of its main range make the parting of the waters, the
"Continental Divide." Its name of the Rockies is appropriate, for on
these mountains and their intervening plateaus, naked rocks are
developed to an extent rarely equalled elsewhere in the world. The
leading causes of this are the great elevation and extreme aridity,
the scanty moisture preventing growth of vegetation, and the high
altitudes promoting denudation of the rock-material disintegrated at
the surface. Enormous crags and bold peaks of bare rocks, mostly
compose the mountains, while the streams flow at the bases of towering
precipices in deep chasms and canyons filled with broken rocks. Being
unprotected by vegetation, the winds sweep the hills clean of soil and
sand, the steep slopes of the valleys are strewn with fragments of the
enclosing cliffs, and the rivers are usually without flood-plains or
intervales, where soils may gather. In the extensive and
highly-elevated plateaus, the streams usually run in the bottoms of
deep canyons, their channels choked with _débris_. Added to this the
whole Rocky Mountain region has in the past been a scene of great
volcanic activity, many extinct volcanoes appear, broad plains are
covered with lava, and scoria and ashes are liberally deposited all
about. The aridity is not a feature of the Pacific coast ranges,
however, for the moisture from that ocean abundantly supplies water;
there are good soils, and in the northern parts usually dense forests.
The Rocky Mountain system extends from Mexico up to Alaska and the
Arctic Ocean, its greatest development being between 38° and 42° north
latitude, where the various ranges cover a breadth of a thousand
miles. The highest peak of the Rockies is Mount Logan, in British
America, on the edge of Alaska, rising nineteen thousand five hundred
and thirty-nine feet. In the United States these mountains rise from a
general plateau extending across the country, and reaching its maximum
elevation of about ten thousand feet in Colorado, whilst towards the
north the surface descends, entering Canada at an elevation of four
thousand feet. The plateau descends westward into the basin of the
Colorado River, then the surface rises in Nevada to six thousand feet,
and thence farther westward it gradually descends to the base of the
Sierra Nevada in California. To the eastward the plateau throughout
steadily descends in the long, undulating and generally treeless slope
of the Great Plains to the Mississippi, the many tributaries of the
Father of Waters carving their valleys down through its surface. There
are numerous mountain ranges, plateaus and parks, under different
names in this extensive mountain region, and the higher peaks in the
United States generally rise to thirteen to fifteen thousand feet
elevation. These mountains and the plains to the eastward compose the
vast arid region constituting fully two-fifths of the United States,
where irrigation is necessary to agriculture, and, in consequence,
less than ten per cent. of this large surface bears forests of any
value. We are told that so scant is the moisture, if the whole current
of every water-course in this district were utilized for irrigation it
would not be possible to redeem four per cent. of the land. Some of
this surface, however, bears grasses and plants that, to an extent,
make pasturage. The precious metals and other useful minerals are
found in abundance, and various parts of the region have been
developed by the many valuable mines, making their owners enormous
fortunes.
Through this vast mountain district, over deserts and along devious
defiles, a half-dozen great railways lead from the Mississippi Valley
to the Pacific slope. The Southern Pacific Railway we have already
followed from New Orleans across to Southern California. Northward
from its route at El Paso a railway leads through New Mexico to the
next great transcontinental line, the Atchison system, coming from
Chicago by way of Kansas City and Santa Fé southwestward The main line
traverses Kansas, and branches go south into the Indian Territory and
Oklahoma. In the former are the reservations of the civilized tribes
of Indians originally removed from east of the Mississippi--the
Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Seminoles, with some
others--who number nearly two hundred thousand souls, most of them
engaged in agriculture. To the westward, south of Kansas and Colorado,
is the "Boomers' Paradise" of Oklahoma, or the "Beautiful Land," a
fertile and well-watered region, originally part of the Indian
reserved lands, but bought from them by the Government. People from
Kansas long had a desire to occupy this prolific land, and only with
great difficulty were they kept out. The portion first got ready was
opened to settlement by proclamation at noon on April 22, 1889, a
large force of troops being in attendance to preserve order. Over
fifty thousand people crossed the boundaries and entered the Territory
the first day, taking up farms and starting towns. The "Cherokee
Strip" along the northern line was subsequently obtained and opened to
settlement in September, 1893, when ninety thousand people rushed in.
These great invasions of the "Oklahoma boomers" became historic,
cities of tents springing up in a night; but while there then was much
suffering and privation from want of food and shelter, yet the new
Territory has since become a most successful agricultural community.
The Atchison route, after crossing Kansas, enters Colorado, passing La
Junta and Trinidad, and then turning southward rises to the highest
point on the line, crossing the summit of the Raton Pass, at an
elevation of seventy-six hundred and twenty feet, by going through a
tunnel, and emerging on the southern side of the mountain in New
Mexico. The railway is then laid along the slope of the Santa Fé
Mountains, and on their side are Las Vegas Hot Springs, about forty of
them being in the group, their waters used both for bathing and
drinking, and having various curative properties. The Glorieta Pass is
subsequently crossed at seventy-five hundred feet elevation, and
beyond is Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico. This is a curious and
antique town, the oldest in the United States next to St. Augustine in
Florida. It was an Indian pueblo or town in the very early times, and
in 1605 the Spaniards came along, captured it, reduced the Indians to
slavery, and worked the valuable gold and silver mines. In 1680 the
Indians revolted, expelled the Spaniards and destroyed their churches
and buildings, but they recovered control a few years later. There are
now about seven thousand people of all races, having a good trade, and
being chiefly employed in mining. It is a quaint old place, with
crooked and narrow streets and adobé houses surrounding the central
Plaza, on one side of which is the ancient Governor's Palace, a long,
low adobé structure of one story, wherein the Governors of Spanish,
Mexican and American rule have lived for nearly three centuries. It
contains various historical paintings and relics, and here General Lew
Wallace wrote _Ben Hur_ while Governor of New Mexico in 1880.
Beyond Santa Fé is the Rio Grande River, which the railway follows
down through a grazing country past Albuquerque, its mart for wool and
hides. Turning westward an arid region is traversed, with an
occasional pueblo, and near Laguna is the famous Mesa Encantada, or
the "Enchanted Table Land." This eminence rises precipitously four
hundred and thirty feet above the surface, and is only accessible by
ladders and ropes. The summit gives evidence of former aboriginal
occupancy, and the tradition of the neighboring Acomas Indians is that
their ancestors lived upon it, but were forced to abandon the village
when a storm had destroyed the only trail and caused those remaining
on the summit to perish. To the westward the "Continental Divide" is
crossed at seventy-three hundred feet elevation, but with nothing
indicating the change, as it is on a plateau. The Navajo Indian
Reservation is crossed, Arizona entered and traversed, and at the
Flagstaff Station is the Lowell Observatory, and here the nearest
route is taken to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. There rises to the
northward the huge San Francisco Mountain, a fine extinct volcano,
while off to the southwest are the great United Verde Copper Mines,
among the largest in the world, and the town of Prescott, in a rich
mineral region. The Colorado River is crossed into California, and
then the railway traverses the wide Mojave Desert towards the Pacific
coast.
DENVER AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
The Union Pacific Railway route across the Continent was the first
constructed, the Government giving large subsidies in money and land
grants. It was opened in 1869, and greatly encouraged travel to the
Pacific coast. The Union Pacific main line starts at Council Bluffs
and Omaha on the Missouri River and crosses Nebraska into Wyoming.
Here is Cheyenne, a leading cattle-dealers' town on the edge of the
Rockies, five hundred miles west of the Missouri, where there are
fifteen thousand people. Fort Russell, an Indian outpost at the verge
of the Black Hills, is to the northward. At Cheyenne, the main Union
Pacific line is joined by the Denver Pacific branch, which starts on
the Missouri River at Kansas City, traverses Kansas, passing Fort
Riley and the Ogden Monument there, marking the geographical centre of
the United States, and enters Colorado, and at Denver turns northward
to Cheyenne.
Denver is the great city of the Rockies, whose snow-capped summits are
seen to the westward in a magnificent and unbroken line, extending in
view for one hundred and seventy miles from Pike's Peak north to
Long's Peak, with many intervening summits, most of them rising over
fourteen thousand feet. Denver stands on a high plateau, through which
the South Platte River flows, and it is at nearly fifty-three hundred
feet elevation. This "Queen City of the Plains" was settled by
adventurous pioneers as a mining camp in 1858, and through the
wonderful development of mining the precious metals has had rapid
growth, so that now there is one hundred and seventy thousand
population. It has many manufactures and some of the most extensive
ore-smelting works in the world, the annual output of gold and silver
being enormous. The high elevation and healthy climate make it a
favorite resort for pulmonary patients. There are many fine buildings,
and a noble State Capitol with a lofty dome, erected at a cost of
$2,500,000, and standing on a high hill, so that it gives a superb
outlook. The city was named in honor of General James W. Denver, who
was an early Governor of Kansas and served in the Civil War. He first
suggested the name of Colorado for the Territory (now a State), and
thus his name was given its capital. Denver has built for its
water-works, forty-eight miles south of the city, the highest dam in
the world, two hundred and ten feet, enclosing a gorge on the South
Platte to make an enormous reservoir holding an ample supply.
Being so admirably located, Denver is a centre for excursions into one
of the most attractive mountain regions in America. The great Colorado
Front Range, or eastern ridge of the Rockies, stretches grandly across
the country and has behind it one range after another, extending far
westward to the Utah Basin. Towering behind the Front Range is the
Saguache Range, the chief ridge of the Rockies, which makes the
Continental Divide. Among these complicated Rocky Mountain ranges are
various extensive Parks or broad valleys, nestling amid the peaks and
ridges, which were originally the beds of inland lakes. Out of this
mountain region flow scores of rivers in all directions, the affluents
of the Mississippi to the east, the Rio Grande to the south, and the
Colorado and the Columbia westward. All of them have carved down deep
and magnificent gorges, two to five thousand feet deep, and in places
the wonderful results of ages of erosion are displayed in the peculiar
constructions of vast regions, and in special sections, where the
carvings by water, frost and wind-forces have made weird and fantastic
formations in the rocks on a colossal scale, as in the "Garden of the
Gods." These mountains and gorges are also filled with untold wealth,
and the mines, producing many millions of gold and silver, have
attracted the population chiefly since the Civil War, so that the
whole district around and beyond Denver is a region of mining towns,
which are reached by a network of railways disclosing the grandest
scenery, and in many parts the most startling and daring methods of
railroad construction. Whenever land can be reclaimed for agriculture
or grazing on the flanks of the mountains and in the protected valleys
and parks, it is done, so that the district has extensive irrigation
canals, in some parts diverting practically all the available flow of
water in the streams. This is particularly the case with the Upper
Arkansas River, such diversion of the headwaters in Colorado having
robbed the river of its water to such a degree that the people of
Kansas, whither it flows on its route to the Mississippi, are greatly
annoyed and have protracted litigation about it.
COLORADO ATTRACTIONS.
Northwest from Denver is the picturesque Boulder Canyon, and here at
the mining town of Boulder is the University of Colorado, with six
hundred students. Beyond are Estes Park, one of the smaller enclosed
parks among the mountains, having Long's Peak on its verge, rising
fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy feet. Westward from Denver
is the Clear Creek Canyon, and the route in that direction leads
through great scenic attractions, past Golden, Idaho Springs and
Georgetown, where silver-mining and health-resorts divide attention,
the mountains also displaying several beautiful lakes. Beyond, the
railway threads the Devil's Gate, climbing up by remarkable loops, and
reaches Graymont at ten thousand feet elevation, having Gray's Peak
above it rising fourteen thousand four hundred and forty feet. In this
district is the mining town of Central City, while to the northwest is
the extensive Middle Park, of three thousand square miles area, a
popular resort for sportsmen. Southward from Denver the railway route
passes the splendid Casa Blanca, a huge white rock, a thousand feet
long and two hundred feet high, and crosses the watershed between the
Platte and the Arkansas, at an elevation of over seventy-two hundred
feet. Here, amid the mountains, seventy-five miles from Denver, upon a
plateau at six thousand feet elevation, is the famous city
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