River Life

N ANXIOUS boy dreads the tameness of the present and future. The lurid past seems to have been a greater period in which to live than is the present. The fact is, where once the utter simplicity of life meant hunting, fishing, fighting savages and enduring hardships, including hunger, we have now every opportunity for old-time difficulties, and all the adventures of modern developments. Fine experience lies at one's own doorstep.

The Mississippi river from St. Paul to the Gulf of Mexico, the Missouri from Fort Benton to the Gulf, the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland, Arkansas, Red—some 10,000 miles of navigable stream, and some 50,000 miles of skiff or canoe waters in the Mississippi Basin alone, offer everything but wild Indians to navigators.

A few hundred youths and adults do discover the wonderland of experience that lies at their perfect command. While hundreds of thousands long for the waterway, only a few really take advantage of what is offered. A trip down the] upper and lower Mississippi ought to be included in every university course; skiff, motorboat or shanty-boat navigation down that river would color the life, broaden the view-point, and increase the resourcefulness of every one undertaking it. The river supplies the power, and the cost would be less than a dollar a day, for each one.

River small-boat navigation has had a big jump, owing to the very desperateness of certain types of humanity. The lower Mississippi is probably wilder, hides more lurking desperadoes and criminals, and offers as great experience as ever in its history—counting in actual numbers.

True, the honest and intelligent element is far and away more numerous in proportion.

The Mississippi, itself, has lost none of its taunts to daring spirits, as a river, and it has added countless varieties of venturesome amusement; even savage human nature does not change, but the resources of the mind give the Mississippi today what La Salle himself could never have found.

The rivers offer far more than they ever did before, and lack little that they ever had.