GENERAL PHYSICAL FEATURES. 141 



Seward's opinion.] 



its strange, capricious, majestic, vivacious career through lake, cascade and river -rapid, and lake 

 after lake, and river after river, cataract and bay, and lake and rapids, finally, after a course of 

 two thousand miles, brings your commerce half way to Europe ; the other, after passing through 

 highlands and prairie a distance of two thousand miles, taking tributary after tributary, from the 

 east to the west, bringing together waters from the western declivities of the Alleghanies, and 

 from those which trickle down the eastern sides of the Rocky mountains, finds its way into the 

 gulf of Mexico. 



Here is the place, the central place, where the agriculture of the richest region of North 

 America must pour out its tributes to the whole world. On the east, all along the shore of lake 

 Superior, and west stretching in one broad plain, in a belt quite across the^continent, is a country 

 where state after state is yet to arise, and where the productions for the support of human society 

 in other, old, crowded states, must be brought forth. 



This is a commanding field ; but it is commanding in regard to the destinies of this country 

 and of this continent, as it is in regard to their commercial future ; for power is not permanently 

 to reside on the eastern slope of the Alleghany mountains, nor in the seaports. Seaports have 

 always been overrun and controlled by the people of the interior ; and the power that shall com- 

 municate and express- the will of men on this continent is to be located in the Mississippi valley, 

 and at the sources of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence. 



In our day, studying perhaps what might have seemed to others trifling or visionary, I had 

 cast about for the future and ultimate central seat of the power of the North American people. I 

 bad looked at Quebec, New Orleans, at Washington and San Francisco, and Cincinnati and St. 

 Louis, and it had been the result of my conjecture that the seat of power for North America 

 would yet be found in the valley of Mexico, and the glories of the Aztec capital would be surren- 

 dered, in its becoming ultimately, and at last, the capital of the United States of America. But I 

 have corrected that view. I now believe that the ultimate, last seat of government on this great con- 

 tinent will be found somewhere within a circle or radius not very far from the spot on which I stand, at 

 the head of navigation on the Mississippi river. 



