Eee ha Fe ee ce ee Tee eee ee EI ee eet eee emt eet ae 
Report of Messrs. Humphreys and Abbot. 19 
be understood, because, like Proteus, it never presents itself 
t. 
All this Pe a disrespectful language, is however 
sadly misapplied. The Mississippi is not a lawless river: it is 
only a large river. It is not a capricious river; but, draining as 
it does an immense hydrographic basin or system of basins, its 
hydraulic pulsations faithfully respond to every meteorological 
vicissitude in all that vast region, and present therefore phe- 
nomena which, at the time and place, may not always furnish 
their own immediate explanation. It is not an inconsistent river; 
for though it may sometimes seem, to the hydraulic engineer'who 
studies its deportment, to conform itself with a docility truly 
gratifying to the formule which he has been taught to suppose 
should represent its movements, and at others may contradict 
them in a manner the mest unceremonious and the most pro- 
voking; yet it is quite an error to draw, on that account, a con- 
clusion injurious to the character of the stream. The true mode 
of looking at the phenomenon is this:—The formula is indeed 
inconsistent with the river, but not the river with itself For 
e river being one of the forms of embodied nature, if the 
th 
formula fails to represent it, then the formula is inconsistent with 
nature: and were the river to conform itself to the formula, it 
woul truly an inconsistent river. mls ae Bg 
It is probably in the fact that the Mississippi is a large riv 
that we shall find a clew to the reason that it has been pro- 
