Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/396

 388 river in Virginia, the grand emporium of all East Indian commodities. Marvel not at this, however surprising it may seem; perhaps, before I have done with you. you will believe it to be not entirely chimera. When it is considered how far the eastern branches of that immense river, Mississippi, extend eastward, and how near they come to the navigable, or rather canoeable parts of the rivers which empty themselves into the sea that washes our shores to the east, it seems highly probable that its western branches reach as far the other way, and make as near approaches to rivers emptying themselves into the ocean to the west of us, the Pacific Ocean, across which a short and easy communication, short in comparison with the present route thither, opens itself to the navigator from that shore of the continent unto the Eastern Indies. Before I go on, lest from the word canoeable, just now used, you should form but a contemptible idea of the navigation of a river which must be carried on by vessels slender and tottering as canoes, I must beg you will suspend sentence for a while, and give me time to inform you, that although one single canoe will carry but a small weight, yet nothing is more common than to see two of these tottering vehicles, when lashed together side by side with cords, or any other strong bandages, carrying down our upland streams eight or nine heavy hogsheads of tobacco at a time to the warehouses, rolled on their gunwales crossways, and secured against moving fore or aft by a small piece of wood drove under the bilge of the two extreme hogsheads; an almost incredible weight for such slender embarkations! But as they will bear such a burden, their slender contexture is an advantage: they draw but few inches water, move down a current with great