22 NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. 



hour, is very turbid and muddy, and is subject to a great rise. 

 Three times, since the country was known to the whites, it 

 has risen thirty or forty feet above the usual high-water 

 mark. The last rise was in the summer of 1844, and was 

 very disastrous, overwhelming the whole bottom country 

 between the bluffs. The Missisippi, rising from lakes in the 

 midst of a champaign, and flowing through a similar region, 

 and over a wide bed, from bluff to bluff, has a slower current, 

 generally from two to two and a half miles an hour, is a clear, 

 limpid stream, and is rarely known to rise more than ten feet. 

 In the spring of 1844, however, it had a rise of fifteen feet or 

 more. The Missi-sippi, or, according to other Indian dia- 

 lects, Massi-sepo (so the Musquakas speak it), great river, is in 

 length, as given by Mr. Nicollet, the latest and most accurate 

 authority, in his report to Congress (p. 125), 2,896 miles, 

 reckonincr to its " utmost sources at the summit of the hauteurs 

 de terre, or dividing ridge between the Missisippi and the 

 Red River of the North." From this point to the mouth of 

 Leech Lake River is 221 miles ; to Wanomon or Vermillion 

 River, 248 ; to the head of the Kabikons, or Little Falls, 269 ; 

 to the mouth of Kagi-wigwan (Crow-wing) River, 515 ; to 

 the Karishon (Crow) River, 667 ; to the mouth of St. Peter's, 

 704 ; St. Croix, 746 ; upper end of Lake Pepin, 781 ; Chip- 

 peway River, 810; Black River, 861 ; Upper Iowa, 918; 

 Wisconsin, 970 ; head of tlie Upper Rapids (Rock River 

 Rapids), 1159; head of the Lower Rapids (Des Moins), 

 1287; Illinois River, 1470; Ohio River, 1680; from thence 

 to the Gulf of Mexico, 1216. Rock River comes into 

 the Missisippi on the east, about nineteen miles below the 

 head of the Upper Rapids. The Lower Iowa River enters 

 on the west, al)out forty-five miles below Rock River; 

 and the Moingonan, or Des Moins, about fifteen miles below 

 the head of the Lower Rapids. These rapids extend about 



