134 NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



winter, while it enters the ocean under the latitude of perpetual 

 verdure; and at last, as if disdaining to terminate its career at the 

 ordinary point of embouchure of other large rivers, has pro- 

 truded its banks into the Gulf of Mexico, more than a hundred 

 miles beyond any other part of the main. To have visited both 

 the source and the mouth of the stream has fallen to the lot of but 

 few, and I believe there is no person living beside myself of 

 whom the remark can be made. On the tenth of July, 1819, I 

 passed out of the mouth of the Mississippi in a brig bound for 

 New York, after descending it in a steamboat from St. Louis, but 

 little thinking I should soon visit its waters, yet, on the twenty- 

 first of July of the following year, I reached its sources in this 

 lake. 



In deciding upon the physical character of the Mississippi 

 Eiver, it may be advantageously considered under four natural 

 divisions, as indicated by permanent differences in its geological 

 and physical character — its vegetable productions, and its velocity 

 and general hydrographical character. Originating in a region 

 of lakes upon the table-lands Avhich throw their waters north 

 into Hudson's Bay, south into the Gulf of Mexico, and east into 

 the Gulf of St. LaAvrence, it pursues its course south to the Falls 

 of Pakagama, a distance of two hundred and thirty miles, through 

 natural meadows or savannas covered with wild rice, rushes, reeds 

 and coarse grasses, and aquatic plants. During the distance, it is 

 extremely devious in its course and width, often expanding into 

 lakes which connect themselves through a vast system of reticu- 

 lated channels. Leech Lake, Cass Lake, and Lake Andrusia 

 would themselves be regarded as small interior seas, were they 

 on any other part of the continent but that which develops Su- 

 perior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Its velocity through 

 the upper plateau is but little, and it affords every facility for the 

 breeding of water fowl and the small furred quadrupeds, the 

 favorite reliance of a nomadic population. 



At the Falls of Pakagama, the first rock stratum and the first 

 wooded island is seen. Here the river has an aggregate fall of 

 twenty feet, and from this point to St. Anthony's Falls, a distance 

 of six hundred miles, it exhibits its second characteristic division. 

 The granitical and metamorphic rocks, which support the vast 

 plateaux and beds of draft of its sources, are only apparent above 



