numerable bars that display their broad backs 

 above its shallow, sluggish water. Every smooth 

 or fluted fill in this great stream tells of a ragged 

 gulch or a roughened, soilless place somewhere 

 on a slope at one of its sources. 



What a mingling of matter makes up the mud 

 of the Mississippi, a soil mixture from twenty 

 States, the blended richness of ten thousand 

 slopes! Coming up the "Father of Waters/' 

 and noting its obstructions of sediment and 

 sand, its embarrassment of misplaced material, 

 its dumps and deposits of soil, monumental 

 ruins of wasted resources, one may say, 

 "Here lies the lineal descendant of Pike's Peak; 

 here the greater part of an Ohio hill"; or, "A 

 flood took this from a terraced cotton-field, and 

 this from a farm in sunny Tennessee." A mud 

 flat itself might remark, "The thoughtless lum- 

 berman who caused my downfall is now in Con- 

 gress urging river improvement"; and the shal- 

 low waters at the big bend could add, "Our 

 once deep channel was filled with soil from a 

 fire-scourged mountain. The minister whose 

 vacation fire caused this ruin is now a militant 



285 



