The River and I

mpression on first acquaintance. It is so with the Missouri River. Carlyle was n

e ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood of muddy water, ripping out a channel from the mo

ng equal, at least, to Adonais. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance in the Grand Scheme, as though

been a very little boy, for the terror I felt made me reach up to the saving forefinger of my father, lest this insane devil-thing before me should suddenly develop an unreasoning hunger for little boys. My father seemed as tall as Alexander-and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at all. And I should

were howling over the walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly developed a frantic desire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat in very bad order. A cottage with a garret window that glared like the eye of a Cyclops, trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the flood, made a panicky plunge

oted oak tree in its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth slavering from its jaws! This dare-dev

gnificence of being a fullgrow

dreadful fascination about it-the fascination of all huge and irresistible th

after all, it sinned through excess of strength, not through weakness. And that is the eternal way of virile things. We watched the steamboats loading for what seemed to me far distant ports. (How the world shri

mer swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she feels the urge of the flood, and yields herself to it, already dwindled to half her size. The pilot turns his wheel

ust leave their moorings and go very, very far away. (I have since heard it said that river boats are not beautiful!) My throat felt as though it had sm

e lands forlorn"! It made the world

lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of the beast when the prey is

e since felt it in the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing that crouched and purred-a mewing

for still one felt in it the subtle influence of a tremendous personality. It slept, but sleeping it was still a giant. It seemed that at any moment the sleeper might turn over, toss the white cov

he Perilo

Formed be

recked in a

to the world out of nowhere-part sound, part scent, and yet too vague for either. Sap seeped from the maples. W

ent on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krag

the awful quietness with deluge potential

rs, and passed swiftly up and down, drawling into the distance. Fissures yawned, and the sound of the grumbling black

s against them-smashed them into little blocks, and went on singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me very proud of

ld yellow giant tighen about my naked body. I have been bent upon his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft of man.

rother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong temper of a comet; but along with

t was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; th

y brother-is the e

e may "study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! The Babylonian streams by which we have all pined in captivity; the sentimental Danube's which we can never forget b

gle become materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire, the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-

d with only a desire to pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the river and cry out into

was to be enacted here in the fullness of years. She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains limited only by the rim of sky; mountains severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the trying of strong spirits; grotesque volcanic lands-dead, utterly ultra-human-where athletic souls might struggle with despair; impetuous streams with their rapids terrible as Scylla, wher

he lines thrilled me; for it was not of the little stream of the ?neid that I thought while the Latin professor quizzed me as to constructions, but of that great river of my own epic country-the Missouri. Was I unfair to

himself ten years among the isles of Greece-and we have the Odyssey. (I would back a Missouri River "rat" to make the distance in a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend who went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; the tender spouse finishes her lor

it has been said somewhere, the poet must write with the b

long since discovered the divinity within ourselves, and so we have

look like a Punch and Judy show! and the Missouri River was the

r frustrated by the superhuman. And in the fur trade era there was no dea

report at the American Fur Company's office at St. Louis before he could be reinstated in the service. This was at Christmas time-Christmas of a Western winter. The distance was seventeen hundred miles, as the crow flies. "Give me a dog to carry my blankets," said he, "and by God I'll report before the ice goes out!" He started afoot through the hostile tribes and blizzards. He reported at

fate moving through the terrific gloom of things. But the smallpox scourge that broke out at Fort Union in 1837, sweeping with desolation through the prairie tribes, moves me more than the storied catastrophes of old. It was a Reign of Terror. Even Larpenteur's bald statement of it fills me with the fine old Greek sense of fate. Men sickened at dawn and were dead at sunset. Every day a cartload or two of corpses went over the bluff into the river; and men became rec

y-here briefly sketch

they were doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the devils." Trappers from the various posts organized to hunt them down, and the mother and the sons barricaded

ing about this story of savage mother-love the

against the Aricaras, and afterward he went as a hunter with the Henry expedition. He had a friend-a mere boy-and these two were very close. One day Glass, who was in advance of the party, beating up the country for game, fell in with a grizzl

was a fighter and refused to die, though he was unconscious: held on stubbornly for several days, but it seemed plain enough that he would have to let go soon. So the young f

ng his false friend. He crawled to a spring near by, where he found a bush of ripe bull-berries. He waited day after day for strength, and finally starte

the Furies for a chorus and Nemesis appe

e Spring

Wall" on the

of the Upp

y of the Missouri River there were hundreds of these heroes, these builders of the epic West. Some of them were violent at times; some were good men and some were bad. But they were masterful always. They met obstacles and overcame them. They struck their foe

it was not called such, all the blank space of the map of the Missouri River country and even to the Pacific, was one vast empire-the empire of the American Fur Company; and J.J. As

rgeois of one of these posts was virtually proconsul with absolute power in his territory. Mackenzie at Union-which might be called the capital of the Upper Missouri country-was called "King of the Missouri." H

ers, their subjects, into the wilderness. Verily, in the

h to be familiar. They make gods of the elements, and na

These moderns materialized the ideal. The latter method is much more appealing to me-an American-than the

hing of their wonder for him. It is owing to this attitude that the prospect of des

oyageurs chanting at the paddles! Mackinaws descending with precious freights of furs! Steamboats grunting and snoring up stream! Old forts sprung up again out of the dusk of things forgotten, with all the old turbulent life, where in reality to-day the plough of the farmer goes or