Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/300

Rh itself down into Lake Cass, the terminal point of Governor Cass's expedition in 1820. When the Mississippi emerges from this lake it is one hundred and seventy-two feet broad and eight feet deep. Thus continues it increasing in width and depth, receiving richer and richer tribute from springs and rivers, now reposing in clear lakes, abounding in innumerable species of fish, then speeding onward between banks covered with wild roses, elders, hawthorns, wild rice, wild plums and all kind of wood fruit, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, through forests of white cedar, pine, birch and sugar-maple, abounding in game of many kinds, such as bears, elks, foxes, racoons, martens, beavers and such like; through the prairie country, the higher and lower full of bubbling fountains, the so-called Undine region, through tracts of country, the fertile soil of which would produce luxuriant harvests of corn, of wheat, potatoes, etc., through an extent of three or four hundred miles, during which it is navigable for a considerable distance, till it reaches St. Anthony. Just above this point, however, it has greatly extended itself, has embraced many greater and smaller islands, overgrown with trees and wild vines. Immediately above the falls it runs so shallow over a vast level surface of rock that people may cross it in carriages, as we did to my astonishment. At no great distance below the falls the river becomes again navigable, and steamers go up as far as Mendota, a village at the outlet of the St. Peter's river into the Mississippi, somewhat above St. Paul's. From St. Paul's there is a free course down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Falls of St. Anthony are the last youthful adventure of the Mississippi. For nine hundred miles the river flows along the territory of Minnesota, a great part of which is wild and almost unknown country.

But to return to the falls and to the day I spent there.

Immediately below the largest of the falls, and