52 WALKS AND TALKS. 



higher up the valley. All are merged together; but we are 

 sure the water and the mud from our own village our own 

 farms are there with the rest. The stream moves on it 

 never rests and it grows as it moves. It courses across a 

 State ; it marks a boundary between States. Men have made 

 it a vehicle for floating logs ; a highway for skiffs and barges. 

 Now, the more pompous stream styles itself a river. It 

 hastens to join the Ohio and share in the dignity of floating 

 steamboats and carrying on the commerce of a populous 

 valley. The Ohio has even surpassed the tributary by which 

 we have been led, in taking on its cargo of mud. We stand 

 in the middle of the suspension bridge at Cincinnati and look 

 down on the yellow surface of the great stream. There go 

 the contributions from half a dozen States. There goes the 

 soil filched from our garden, or torn from our new-made road, 

 two hundred miles away. We know it is there. 



Look on the map and notice how many rivers are bring- 

 ing their sediments to the Ohio. Trace these tributaries to 

 their sources. From how wide a territory is the mud gath- 

 ered which thus rushes down with the main river? Notice 

 that the Ohio carries its burden to the Mississippi. Look 

 again upon the map and see how many other great rivers 

 bring the mud from other far-off regions to concentrate it all 

 in the mighty Father of Waters. Here float sediments from 

 western New York, from West Virginia, from the Ozark Mount- 

 ains, from the Cumberland Table Land, from Minnesota, and 

 the Indian Territory. Here in this resistless tide floats the iden- 

 tical soil which was washed from Farmer Jones's potato field. 



In this view, consider the great Missouri. It pours its 

 yellow stream into the clearer tide of the Mississippi a few 

 miles above St. Louis. I have stood on the deck of a steamer 

 between Alton and St. Louis and looked down on the Mis- 

 souri's turbid volume pushing far into the Mississippi, and re- 

 taining for miles a distinct boundary between the waters of 

 the two rivers. It appears that the contributions from the 

 far northwest exceed all those from the east. Follow the 

 whirling tide of the Missouri upward toward its sources. 



