324 AMERICAN RIVERS. 



under this soothing influence the troubles of the past 

 and the trials that he believes in store for him. 



But in our little island home of England, so cur- 

 tailed in space by sea as almost to be to its inhabitants 

 as limited in extent as a hive is to a swarm of bees, 

 those ideas of boundlessness, those manifestations 

 of grandeur, are always wanting ; to see them in 

 perfection the Atlantic must be crossed, and the 

 traveller stand on the margin of the reckless, head- 

 strong Niagara, navigate the blue rapids of the 

 Mississippi, drift down the muddy, heavily timbered 

 Missouri, or visit other equally attractive but less 

 known streams. To trace a river from birth to 

 death, from where it bubbles from the mountain 

 ravine to where it passes into the all-absorbing ocean, 

 is a pleasure that requires no enhancing. In England 

 a transit of one hundred miles will generally accom- 

 plish this end ; in America, in some instances, 

 twenty times this distance will not be sufficient, and 

 the greater portion of the space traversed is not 

 unfrequently all latitude, or, in other words, through 

 a country the position of which is most affected 

 by changes of temperature, sufficient reason, all will 

 understand, to make such a journey more than 

 usually attractive to the naturalist, for in his course 

 he will possibly find residents of the Frigid, Tempe- 

 rate, and Torrid Zones. Although it has often in 

 early days been imparted to me by the old and wise 

 that the rolling stone gathers no moss, it has failed 

 to make me less desirous of travelling, or to ease 



