Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/397

 Rh city, and leave the waterman nothing but Palinurus's task to perform when going downwards; and when they return, two men will shove the canoes with poles as far against stream in one day, as four brisk watermen with oars can a boat that will carry the same burden, in two days. For this great improvement of inland navigation, we mountaineers are indebted to the late Reverend and ingenious Mr. Rose. But, to return: There are more than probable reasons for believing that the western branches of this river are no less extensive than its eastern branches. This is a common property of most rivers, and that it is of the Mississippi, I have the authority of one Mr. Cox, an English gentleman who either some time before, or during the reign of King William III (in virtue of a charter granted by Charles I., if I remember right, for I speak without book, to his Attorney-General, Sir Robert Heath, constituting him the Lord-Proprietor of the lands and waters of the Mississippi, and afterwards transferred through several hands, till it fell into those of this gentleman), sailed up to its Great Falls near 1500 miles from its mouth, both took its soundings that whole distance, traced some of its most considerable branches on either side, and almost up to their sources, made a settlement and planted a colony upon it near midway that distance, if my memory fails me not, and published a map of it from his own and the Company's journals as far as those Falls; and above them, from what information he could collect from the savages. One of its western branches, he tells you, he followed through its various meanders for seven hundred miles (which, I believe, is called Missouri by the natives, or Red River, from the color of its waters), and then received intelligence from the natives that its head springs interlocked in a neighboring mountain with the head springs of another