Mississippi Sentence Examples

The wish to meet people of the different sections of the country and to explain his position upon the questions of the day led the President to begin (14th September 1909), a tour which included the Pacific coast, the South-west, the Mississippi Valley and the South Atlantic states, and during which he travelled 13,000 miles and made 266 speeches.

Originally Mississippi was almost entirely covered with a growth of forest trees of large size, mostly deciduous; and in 1900 about seven-tenths of its area was still classed as timber-land.

Mississippi ranks high among the southern states in the production of lumber.

Mississippi is devoted largely to the cultivation of cotton.

However, she needed to get to the emerops facility in the town and then cross the bridge across the Mississippi.

There are three cities along the Mississippi.

Randolph was the smallest of them, so she'd picked this town to cross the River rather than the larger ones south along the Mississippi.

There were likely some nasty security features on the other side of the Mississippi left over from the East-West Civil War.

With a deep breath, she released the locks on all the emerops facilities east of the Mississippi.

The normal annual precipitation for Mississippi is about 51 in.; for the southern half, 54 in., and for the northern half, 49 in.

While at Memphis she went over one of the large Mississippi steamers.

We settled on a bench with a view of the mighty Mississippi.

We've issued warning orders for the populace to avoid the cities, and we're stopping and quarantining everyone at the Mississippi.

What is this, the command center for everything this side of the Mississippi?

With Lana, you'll have access to all the emerops depots the feds have east of the Mississippi.

I can influence everything on this side of the Mississippi.

Tim released the locations to everything east of the Mississippi.

The emerops facility was across a field and a road then down a few blocks in the ghost town that was the city of Randolph on the eastern shores of the Mississippi.

And you're excluding the area on the other side of the Mississippi.

Four-story buildings had been built to the ceiling, flanking a narrow pathway and canal of water, siphoned from the Mississippi.

Mike gazed towards the Mississippi.

She pulled out her micro as they traveled at the bottom of the Mississippi.

This change of attitude is thought to have been due chiefly to his suspicion of the North aroused by John Jay's proposal to surrender to Spain for twentyfive or thirty years the navigation of the Mississippi.

The Pontotoc ridge separates the drainage system of the Mississippi from that of the Tombigbee; extending from the northeastern part of the state southward, this ridge divides in Choctaw county, the eastern branch separating the drainage basin in the Pascagoula from that of the Pearl, and the western branch separating the drainage basin of the Pearl from that of the Big Black and the Mississippi.

Seven formations (or groups) of the Tertiary strata have been distinguished in Mississippi.

The most fertile soil is the alluvium of the' Delta, deposited during the overflows of the Mississippi.

The principal lines are the Illinois Central, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Southern, the Mobile & Ohio, the New Orleans & North-eastern, the Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham, the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City, the Alabama & Vicksburg, and the Gulf & Ship Island.

The state insane hospital, opened at Jackson in 1856 (act of 1848), in time became overcrowded and the East Mississippi insane hospital was opened, 2 m.

In 1673 a French expedition organized in Canada under Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, and nine years later (1682) Rene Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, reached the mouth of the river, took formal possession of the country which it drains, and named it Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV.

The first European settlement in Mississippi was founded in 1699 by Pierre Lemoyne, better known as Iberville, at Fort Maurepas (Old Biloxi) on the north side of Biloxi Bay, in what is now Harrison county.

At the close of the Seven Years' War (1763) France ceded to Great Britain all her territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain.

Mississippi Territory was then organized, with Winthrop Sargent as governor.

Mississippi thus became one of the first states in the Union to establish an elective judiciary.

The government added them to Mississippi in 1804.

Claiborne's Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State (Jackson, 1880), gives the best account of the period before the Civil War.

McCardle, History of Mississippi (New York, 1893), is useful for local history.

Garner's Reconstruction Mississippi (New York, 1902) is judicial, scholarly and readable.

Most of Riley's work is in the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford, 1898 seq.), which he edited; see his Spanish Policy in Mississippi-after the Treaty of San Lorenzo, i.

There is much material in the Encyclopaedia of Mississippi History (2 vols., Madison, Wisconsin, 1907), edited by Dunbar Rowland.

Foote established at Mound City a naval depot, which was the basis of his operations on the Mississippi.

Not only is the pest carried from place to place, but it also migrates, and in 1907 it crossed from Louisiana, where it first appeared in 1905, to Mississippi.

Two years later the American Congress annexed the portion of West Florida between the Pearl and the Mississippi rivers to Louisiana (hence the so-called Florida parishes of Louisiana), and that between the Pearl and the Perdido to the Mississippi Territory.

Shipherd (1802-1844), pastor of a church in Elyria, and the Rev. Philo Penfield Stewart (1798-1868), a missionary to the Choctaws of Mississippi, as a home for Oberlin Collegiate Institute, which was chartered in 1834; the name Oberlin College was adopted in 1850.

At a cost of $7,200,000, the city completed in 1917 a municipal bridge of massive steel construction, double track and double deck, across the Mississippi.

Louis receives 70,000 H.P. by a Iio,000-volt transmission line from the Keokuk dam in the Mississippi at Keokuk, Ia.

The northern part can best be regarded as a low plateau (once marine sediments) sloping southward, traversed by the large diluvial valleys of the Mississippi, Red and Ouachita rivers, and recut by smaller tributaries into smaller plateaus and rather uniform flat-topped hills.

The mounds were probably formed by some gentle eruptive action like that exhibited in the " mud hills " along the Mississippi below New Orleans; but no explanation is generally accepted.

The principal rivers are the Mississippi, which flows nearly 600 m.

These flood plains form collectively what is known as the alluvial region, which extends in a broad belt down the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Ouachita and its branches and the Red river to and beyond the limits of the state.

Its breadth along the Mississippi within Louisiana ranges from to to 50 or 60 m., and that along the Red river and the Ouachita has an average breadth of to m.

Through its great flood-plain the Mississippi river winds upon the summit of a ridge formed by its own deposits.

Nearly all of this vast flood-plain lies below the level of high water in the Mississippi, and, but for the protection afforded by the levees, every considerable rise of its waters would inundate vast areas of fertile and cultivated land.

The alluvial region of the state in 1909 was mainly protected against overflow from the Mississippi river by 754 m.

The Federal government, after its participation in the work, acted through a Board of Engineers, known as the " Mississippi River Commission."

It has been so useful in relieving the Mississippi of floods, that the Red river may possibly be permanently diverted again into the bayou artificially.

These are simply parts of the sea which have escaped the filling-in process carried on by the great river and the lesser streams. A second class, called " ox-bow" lakes, large in numbers but small in area, includes ordinary cut-off meanders along the Mississippi and Red rivers.

The entire state is included within the Austro-riparian life zone; the higher portions fall within the Carolinian area and the lower portions, including the Gulf and the Mississippi embayment almost to the N.E.

An important boundary dispute with Mississippi arose over beds lying near the state line.

In good seasons and exceptional localities the yield may approach a bale per acre, as in Assumption parish, and in the Mississippi valley at the junction of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

Some rice also is grown on the lowlands of the Mississippi valley, notably in Plaquemines, Jefferson and Lafourche parishes.

In the Mississippi valley water is taken from the river by flumes in the levees or by siphons.

There are many fine groves on the Mississippi below New Orleans.

The canal system is especially well developed in the parishes of the Mississippi delta, where, at the close of 1907, there were about 50 m.

In 1907 active preliminary work was begun on the Louisiana section of a great interstate inland waterway projected by the national government between the Mississippi and Rio Grande rivers, almost parallel to the Gulf Coast and running through the rice and truck-farm districts from the Teche to the Mermenton river (92 m.).

A colony of Germans sent over by John Law to the Arkansas removed to the Mississippi above New Orleans, and gave to its bank the name of the " German Coast," by which it is still known.

Since that time conditions of health in New Orleans have been revolutionized (in 1907 state control of maritime quarantine on the Mississippi was supplanted by that of the national government), and smaller cities and towns have been stimulated to take action by her example.

That Hernando de Soto entered the borders of the present state of Louisiana, and that his burial place in the Mississippi was where that river takes the waters of the Red, are probable enough, but incapable of conclusive proof.

Survivors of de Soto's expedition, however, descended the Mississippi to its mouth in 1542.

Spain set up no claim to the region, and when Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, came down the river in 1682 from the French possessions to the north, he took possession in the name of France, which hereby gained her first title to the vast drainage basin of the Mississippi.

La Salle attempted to settle a colony in 1684, but missed the Mississippi's mouth and landed in Texas, where he was murdered in 1687 by some of his followers.

Soon after Iberville had built Fort Maurepas (near the present city of Biloxi, Mississippi) in 1699, a fort was erected on the Mississippi river about 40 m.

From 1712 to 1717 " Louisiana," or the French possessions of the Mississippi valley, was held by Antoine Crozat (1655-1738) as a private grant from the king.

The chief interest of the Spanish period lies in the advance of settlement in the western territories of the United States, the international intrigues - British, French and Spanish - involving the future of the valley, the demand of the United States for free navigation on the Mississippi, and the growing consciousness of the supreme importance of the river and New Orleans to the Union.

In 1794 Spain, hard pressed by Great Britain and France, turned to the United States, and by the treaty of 1794 the Mississippi river was recognized by Spain as the western boundary of the United States, separating it from Louisiana, and free navigation of the Mississippi was granted to citizens of the United States, to whom was granted for three years the right " to deposit their merchandise and effects in the port of New Orleans, and to export them from thence without paying any other duty than a fair price for the hire of the stores."

A few days later the portion of West Florida between the Mississippi and Pearl rivers (the present " Florida Parishes ") was included in its boundaries, making them as they are to-day.

It descended the Ohio and Mississippi from Pittsburg, whence there had already been a thriving river trade to New Orleans for about thirty years.

Only in the valleys of the Red, Minnesota and Mississippi rivers does the elevation fall below 800 ft.

A few rivers in the south drain into the Mississippi through Iowa, while a smaller area in the extreme north is drained through the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake into Hudson Bay.

The Mississippi river, which flows for about 800 m.

Both furnish valuable water-power, which is true also of the Cannon and Zumbro rivers flowing into the Mississippi below Hastings.

This lake drained southward into the Gulf of Mexico via the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, until the ice sheet which had prevented its natural drainage to the north had melted sufficiently to allow it to be drained off into Hudson Bay by way of the Nelson River.

The state supports three parks - Itasca state park (22,000 acres, established in 1891), about the sources of the Mississippi, in Clearwater, Becker and Hubbard counties; the St Croix (established in 1895), in Chicago county, across the St Croix from the Wisconsin state park of the same name, and including the beautiful Dalles of the St Croix; and the Minneopa state park (established in 1905), containing Minneopa Falls, near Mankato.

Seven navigable rivers within or on the borders of the state - the Red River of the north, the Red Lake River, Rainy River, the Minnesota, the Mississippi, the St Croix and the St Louis 1 - give facilities for transport by water that exert an important competing influence on freight charges; and at the " Head of the Lakes " (Duluth-Superior) many lines of steamships on the Great Lakes, providing direct or indirect connexion with the Eastern and Southern states, make that port in respect to tonnage the first in the United States.

The first European visitors to the territory now embraced in the state of Minnesota found it divided between two powerful Indian tribes, the Ojibways or Chippewas, who occupied the heavily wooded northern portion and the region along the Mississippi river, and the Sioux or Dakotas, who made their homes on the more open rolling country in the south and west and in the valley of the Minnesota.

Two years afterwards the upper course of the Mississippi was explored by Joliet and Marquette.

A few years later (1694) Le Sueur, who had as early as 1684 engaged in trade along the upper Mississippi, established a trading post on Isle Pelee (Prairie Island) in the Mississippi between Hastings and Red Wing, and in 1700 he built Fort L'Huillier at the confluence of the Blue Earth and the Le Sueur rivers.

But none of the French posts was permanent, and in 1763 French rule came to an end, the Treaty of November (1762) and the Treaty of Versailles (1763) transferring respectively the western portion of the state to Spain and that part east of the Mississippi river to Great Britain.

In 1819 Michigan Territory was extended westward to the Mississippi river, and in 1820 General Lewis Cass, its governor, conducted an exploring expedition in search of the source of the Mississippi, which he was satisfied was in the body of water named Lake Cass in his honour.

Further search for the true source of the Mississippi was made in 1823 by Giacomo Constantio Beltrami (1779-1855), an Italian traveller and political refugee, and in 1832 by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who had accompanied Cass's expedition and traced the Mississippi from Lake Cass to Lake Itasca.

In 1823 the first river steamboat reached St Paul; the Mississippi was soon afterwards opened to continuous if irregular navigation; and in 1826 a party of refugees from Lord Selkirk's colony on the Red River settled near Fort Snelling.

On the erection of Wisconsin Territory in 1836 the whole of Minnesota, which then extended westward to the Missouri river, was incorporated with it, but on the erection of Iowa Territory in 1838 Minnesota was divided and the part west of the Mississippi became a part of Iowa Territory.

Poinsett at Washington, the Indian titles to all lands east of the Mississippi were practically extinguished.

The admission of Wisconsin as a state in 1848 left that part of the former territory west of the St Croix and north of the Mississippi rivers, which was not included in the new state, practically without a government.

By the Federal census of 1850 the territory had a population of 6077, most of whom lived east of the Mississippi, or along the Red river in the extreme north-west.

Two treaties negotiated with the Sioux by Luke Lea, commissioner, and Governor Alexander Ramsey in 1851 opened to settlement the greater part of the land within the territory west of the Mississippi, and such an unparalleled rush to the new lands took place that a census taken in 1857 showed a population of 150,037.

It was the birthplace of several well-known persons, among others of John Law (1671-1729), originator of the Mississippi scheme, Lauriston Castle being situated in the parish.

His father, Samuel Davis (1756-1824), who served in the War of Independence, was of Welsh, and his mother, Jane Cook, of Scotch-Irish descent; during his infancy the family moved to Wilkinson county, Mississippi.

In 1844 he was chosen as a presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket; in February 1845 he married Miss Varina Howell (1826-1906) of Mississippi (a granddaughter of Governor Richard Howell of New Jersey), and in the same year became a Democratic representative in Congress.

During his first session, war with Mexico was declared, and he resigned his seat in June 1846 to take command of the first regiment raised in his state - the Mississippi Rifles.

In the debates on the Compromise Measures of 1850 he took an active part, strongly opposing these measures, while Henry Stuart Foote (1800-1880), the other Mississippi senator, was one of their leading advocates.

On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned majorgeneral of the forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict.

After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865, President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of Generals Smith and Magruder.

He served in the Congress of the Confederation from 1783 to 1786 and was there conspicuous for his vigorous insistence upon the right of the United States to the navigation of the Mississippi River, and for his attempt, in 1785, to secure for the weak Congress the power to regulate commerce, in order to remove one of the great defects in the existing central government.

Livingston, the resident minister, in obtaining by purchase the territory at the mouth of the Mississippi, including the island of New Orleans, and at the same time authorized him to co-operate with Charles Pinckney, the minister at Madrid, in securing from Spain the cession of East and West Florida.

He served in the first battle of Bull Run; commanded a brigade in Kentucky in the winter of 1861, a division in Tennessee and Mississippi early in 1862, and the 1st Corps in Kentucky in October of the same year; was in command of Nashville in November and December of that year; and was then engaged in Tennessee until after the battle of Chickamauga, after which he saw no active service at the front during the Civil War.

Mark Twain's boyhood was spent at Hannibal, which is the setting of Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer; Hannibal Cave, described in Tom Sawyer, extends for miles beneath the river and its bluffs.

In February 1789, guided by compass, he traversed the country, practically unknown to white men, from Frederickstown to Quebec, falling in with Indians by the way, with whom he fraternized; and in a subsequent expedition he was formally adopted at Detroit by the Bear tribe of Hurons as one of their chiefs, and made his way down the Mississippi to New Orleans, whence he returned to England.

In Louisiana diffusion is successfully worked on two or three large estates; but the general body of planters are shy of using it, although there is no lack of water, the Mississippi being near at hand.

New Hampshire had the highest average, 1785 lb per acre, and Mississippi the lowest, 440 Ib.

The ores of the Joplin district, in the Ozark uplift in the Mississippi Valley, are remarkable in that they are specially adapted to mechanical concentration.

But Halleck soon went to Washington as general-in-chief, and Grant took command of his old army and of Rosecrans' Army of the Mississippi.

In March 1863, still troubled by his wound, he was assigned to the command of the south-west, and in May was ordered to take immediate command of all the Confederate forces in Mississippi, then threatened by Grant's movement on Vicksburg.

Later he did similar work in the valley of the Mississippi, and, with Lieut.

Abbott, produced in 1861 a valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River.

He took part in Halleck's advance on Corinth, Mississippi, and at the close of 1862 led the Mississippi column in the first Vicksburg campaign.

He had already prepared for a further advance by making an expedition into the heart of Mississippi as far as Meridian, destroying railways and making impracticable, for a season, the transfer of military operations to that region; and on Grant becoming general-in-chief (March 1864) he was made commander of the military division of the Mississippi, including his Army of the Tennessee, now under McPherson, the Army of the Cumberland, under Thomas, and the Army of the Ohio, under Schofield.

After a devious chase of a month Hood moved across Alabama to northern Mississippi.

In view of operations against Corinth, Mississippi, Grant's army had ascended the Tennessee to Pittsburg Landing and there disembarked, while the co-operating army under Buell moved across country from Nashville to join it.

At the same time his protege, the filibusterer, Philip Nolan, was engaged in a reconnaissance for him west of the Mississippi.

Among the manufactures are beer, wagons, wool, and pearl buttons, and the city is a centre of the fresh-water pearl fisheries along the Mississippi.

Jackson is served by the Illinois Central, the Alabama & Vicksburg, the Gulf & Ship Island, New Orleans Great Northern, and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railways, and during the winter by small freight and passenger steamboats on the Pearl River.

Among birds common in Texas as well as in the other Southern States are the cardinal, golden-fronted woodpecker, Mississippi kite, mourning-dove, and turkey-buzzard.

Other important waterways which have been authorized by the United States government and on which work was proceeding in 1910 are canals from the Rio Grande river to the Mississippi river at Donaldsonville, Louisiana; and "a navigable channel depth of 5 ft.

Of the inhabitants born in the United States 130,389 were natives of Tennessee, 129,945129,945 of Alabama, 90,584 of Mississippi, 77,950 of Georgia and 75,633 of Arkansas; and of the foreign-born 71,062 were Mexicans, 48,295 Germans, 9204 Bohemians, 8213 English, 6870 Austrians and 6173 natives of Ireland.

Transportation facilities by water are afforded by the Mississippi river.

The former difficulties with the Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi (which are passable for rafts and light boats at high water) have been overcome by a canal from Keokuk to Montrose constructed by the National Government.

Iowa, as a part of the whole Mississippi Valley, was taken into the formal possession of France in 1682; in 1762 as a part of the western half of that valley it was ceded to Spain; in 1800 it was retroceded to France; in 1803 was ceded to the United States; from 1804 to 1805, as a part of the District of Louisiana, it was under the government of Indiana Territory; from 1805 to 1812 it was a part of Louisiana Territory; from 1812 to 1821 a part of Missouri Territory; from 1821 to 1834 a part of the unorganized territory of the United States; from 1834 to 1836 a part of Michigan Territory; from 1836 to 1838 a part of Wisconsin Territory.

The proportion of the child population that attends schools is equalled, in but two or three states east of the Mississippi river.

In 1682 Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, who had already explored the Ohio, sailed down the Mississippi and took possession of the region at the mouth by the name of Louisiana.

Therefore the French government strove to unite the beggarly settlements in Canada and Louisiana by setting up posts all along the Ohio and the Mississippi, in order to confine the English between the Alleghanies and the sea.

The peoples of the thirteen states which had secured emancipation from British sovereignty were wisely intent on framing their own Federal Union, and in taking effective possession of the vast territories in the Ohio region and beyond the Mississippi.

The Mississippi valley tribes are nearly brachycephalic; the index increases around the Great Lakes, and lessens farther east.

Muskhogean tribes were potters, but Siouan tribes, as a rule, in all the Mississippi drainage were not.

The absence of good bark, dugout timber, and chisels of stone deprived the whole Mississippi valley of creditable water-craft, and reduced the natives to the clumsy trough for a dugout and miserable bull-boat, made by stretching dressed buffalo hide over a crate.

The Dene (Tinneh) myths resembled those of the Eskimo, and all the hunting tribes of eastern Canada and United States and the Mississippi valley have a mythology based upon their zootechny and their totemism.

A small part of the state, in the W., drains to the Ohio, and thence, by way of the Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico; and a much larger area drains into the Susquehanna, entering the head of Chesapeake Bay.

When supplied with firearms by Europeans they reduced a number of other tribes to subjection and extended their dominion over most of the territory from the St Lawrence to the Tennessee and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

New York ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1778, and when Maryland refused to ratify unless those states asserting claims to territory west to the Mississippi agreed to surrender them, New York was the first to do so.

Davenport is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Iowa & Illinois (interurban), and the Davenport, Rock Island & North Western railways; opposite the city is the western terminus of the Illinois and Mississippi, or Hennepin, Canal (which connects the Mississippi and Illinois rivers).

His father was a country merchant from Tennessee, who moved soon after his son's birth to Hannibal, Missouri, a little town on the Mississippi.

At seventeen he went back to the Mississippi, determined to become a pilot on a riversteamboat.

In his Life on the Mississippi he has recorded graphically his experiences while "learning the river."

He went to the mines for a season, and there he began to write in the local newspapers, adopting the pen name of "Mark Twain," from a call used in taking soundings on the Mississippi steamboats.

The result of a second visit to Europe was humorously recorded in A Tramp Abroad (1880), followed in 1882 by a more or less historical romance, The Prince and the Pauper; and a year later came Life on the Mississippi.

After this disaster he issued a third Mississippi Valley novel, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, in 1894, and in 1896 another historical romance, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, wherein the maid is treated with the utmost sympathy and reverence.

But the books in which his humour is broadly displayed, the travels and the sketches, are not really so significant of his power as the three novels of the Mississippi, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson, wherein we have preserved a vanished civilization, peopled with typical figures, and presented with inexorable veracity.

Its subscribers were found throughout all quarters of the northern half of the Union from Maine to Oregon, large packages going to remote districts beyond the Mississippi or Missouri, whose only connexion with the outside world was through a weekly or semi-weekly mail.

The main range of the Rocky Mountains separates that part which is drained west into the'Columbia river and the Pacific Ocean from that which is drained east into the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and the Gulf of Mexico, and from a very small part which is drained north-east into Hudson Bay; the water-parting which in Montana separates the drainage into Hudson Bay from the drainage into the Gulf of Mexico crosses only the north-west region of Teton county.

While he was criticized by the friends of Civil Service Reform for not going far enough during his presidency to protect the encroachments of those who desire to have the offices distributed as political rewards or for partisan ends, such specific acts as his transference to the classified service of all fourth-class postmasters east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers, his insistence upon a thorough investigation of the scandals in the Post Office department, and his order forbidding federal employes to use their offices for political purposes in the campaign of 1908 are typical of his vigorous support of the merit system.

Greenville is served by the Southern and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railways, and by various passenger and freight steamboat lines on the Mississippi river.

The first Europeans known to have visited the site of Milwaukee were Father Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit missionary, and his companion, Louis Joliet, who on their return in the autumn of 1673 to the mission of St Francis Xavier at De Pere from their trip down the Mississippi, skirted the west shore of Lake Michigan in their canoes from Chicago northward.

Previous to this, however, in 1851, the first train ran over the Chicago Milwaukee & St Paul railway to Waukesha, and in 1857 through trains were run over the same road to the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien.

He was commissioned lieutenant in April 1861, and in the Civil War served on the steamsloop "Mississippi" (1861-1863) during Farragut's passage of the forts below New Orleans in April 1862, and at Port Hudson in March 1863; took part in the fighting below Donaldsonville, Louisiana, in July 1863; and in 1864-1865 served on the steam-gunboat "Agawam" with the North Atlantic blockading squadron and took part in the attacks on Fort Fisher in December 1864 and January 1865.

The main watershed follows a tortuous course which crosses the mountainous belt just north of New river in Virginia; south of this the rivers head in the Blue Ridge, cross the higher Unakas, receive important tributaries from the Great Valley, and traversing the Cumberland Plateau in spreading gorges, escape by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Ohio and Mississippi, and thus to the Gulf of Mexico; in the central section the rivers, rising in or beyond the Valley Ridges, flow through great gorges (water gaps) to the Great Valley, and by southeasterly courses across the Blue Ridge to tidal estuaries penetrating the coastal plain; in the northern section the water-parting lies on the inland side of the mountainous belt, the main lines of drainage running from north to south.

Making common cause against the French to determine the control of the Ohio valley, the unsuspected strength of the colonists was revealed,' and the successful ending of the French and Indian War extended England's territory to the Mississippi.

In North America the Carolina parakeet, Conurus carolinensis, at the beginning of the i 9th century used to range in summer as high as the shores of lakes Erie and Ontario - a latitude equal to the south of France; and even much later it reached, according to trustworthy information, the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi, though now its limits have been so much curtailed that its occurrence in any but the Gulf States is doubtful.

In national affairs Maryland early took a stand of perhaps farreaching consequences in refusing to sign the Articles of Confederation (which required the assent of all the states before coming into effect), after all the other states had done so (in 1779), until those states claiming territory between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi and north of the Ohio - Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut - should have surrendered such claims. As those states finally yielded, the Union was strengthened by reason of a greater equality and consequently less jealousy among the original states, and the United States came into possession of the first territory in which all the states had a common interest and out of which new states were to be created.

The Confederacy consisted of eleven states (Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee).

In the centre, the valleys of the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee were the battle-ground of large armies attacking and defending the south and south-eastern states of the Confederacy, while on and beyond the great waterway of the Mississippi was carried on the struggle for those interests, vital to either party, which depended on the mighty river and its affluents.

Between the Mississippi and the mountains the whole of the year was spent by both sides in preparing for the contest.

This success opened up the lower Mississippi at the same time as the armies of the west began to move down that river under Grant, who was always accompanied by the gunboat flotilla which had been created on the upper waters in 1861.

Here Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Columbus on the Mississippi guarded the left of the Southern line, Sidney Johnston himself maintaining a precarious advanced position at Bowling Green, with his lieutenants, Zollicoffer and Crittenden, farther east at Mill Springs, and a small force under General Marshall in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

Thus the first campaign of the western armies, completed by the victory of the gunboat flotilla at Memphis (June 6), cleared the Mississippi as far down as Vicksburg, and compelled the Confederates to evacuate the Cumberland and a large portion of the Tennessee basins.

Halleck went to Washington as general-in-chief, Pope was transferred to Virginia, Grant, with his own Army of the Tennessee and Rosecrans's (lately Pope's) Army of the Mississippi, was entrusted with operations on the latter river, while Buell's Army of the Ohio was ordered to east Tennessee to relieve the inhabitants of that district, who, as Unionist sympathizers, were receiving harsh treatment from the Confederate and state authorities.

Sherman from Memphis, and a force from Helena on the Arkansas side, failed, owing to Pemberton's prompt retirement to Oxford, Mississippi, and complications brought about by the intrigues of an able but intractable subordinate, McClernand, induced Grant to make a complete change of plan.

Sherman was to proceed down the great river, and join the ships from the Gulf before Vicksburg, while Grant himself drove Pemberton southwards along the Mississippi Central railway.

The part played by the gunboats on the upper Mississippi had been most conspicuous, as had been the operations of Farragut's heavier ships in the lower waters of the same river.

General Johnston opposed him almost on the old Chickamauga battle-ground, where the Federal commander, after a brief campaign in Mississippi and Alabama, the result of which was to clear his right flank (February 3 - March 6, 1864), collected his armies - the Army of the Tennessee under McPherson, the Army of the Cumberland under Thomas (Hooker's troops had now become part of this army) and the Army of the Ohio under Schofield.

Mississippi river steamers were armed with heavy guns and protected by armour, boiler-plates, cotton bales, &c., and some fast cruisers were constructed for ocean work, one of them actually reaching the high speed of 17.75 m.

Another lowland area embraces that small part of the state in the extreme south-east which lies west of the Tennessee river; this belongs to that part of the Coastal Plain Region which extends north along the Mississippi river; it has in Kentucky an average elevation of less than 500 ft.

The Cumberland, after flowing for a considerable distance in the south-east and south central part of the state, passes into Tennessee at a point nearly south of Louisville, and in the extreme south-west the Cumberland and the Tennessee, with only a short distance between them, cross Kentucky and enter the Mississippi at Smithland and Paducah respectively.

The first banking currency in Kentucky was issued in 1802 by a co-operative insurance company established by Mississippi Valley traders.

In 1763 the Kentucky country was claimed by the Cherokees as a part of their hunting grounds, by the Six Nations (Iroquois) as a part of their western conquests, and by Virginia as a part of the territory granted to her by her charter of 1609, although it was actually inhabited only by a few Chickasaws near the Mississippi river and by a small tribe of Shawnees in the north, opposite what is now Portsmouth, Ohio.

The delay, together with the proposal of John Jay, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and commissioner to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Spanish envoy, to surrender navigation rights on the lower Mississippi for twenty-five years in order to remove the one obstacle to the negotiations, aroused so much feeling that General James Wilkinson and a few other leaders began to intrigue not only for a separation from Virginia, but also from the United States, and for the formation of a close alliance with the Spanish at New Orleans.

The power of the Indians was overthrown by General Anthony Wayne's victory in the battle of Fallen Timbers, fought the 10th of August 1794 near the rapids of the Maumee river a few miles above the site of Toledo, Ohio; and the Mississippi question was settled temporarily by the treaty of 1795 and permanently by the purchase of Louisiana in 1803.

An investigation by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1909 finds that the crude Mexican oils are of low grade, but that while not equal to those found in the upper Mississippi basin for refining purposes, they furnish an excellent fuel for railway engines and other industrial purposes.

In the Upper Mississippi lead region of Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin the ore fills large cavities or chambers in limestone.

Here Nicolas Perrot, the first French commandant in the North-West, established his headquarters, and Father Jacques Marquette wrote the journal of his journey to the Mississippi.

On the 9th of August 1805 he started with twenty men from St Louis to explore the head-waters of the Mississippi.

He reached Leech Lake ("Lake La Sang Sue"), which he called "the main source of the Mississippi," on the 1st of February 1806; went 30 m.

The central plains are divided by a hardly perceptible height of land into a Canadian and a United States portion; from the latter the great Mississippi system discharges southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

The upper Mississippi and some of the Ohio basin is the prairie region, with trees originally only along the watercourses; the uplands towards the Appalachians were included in the great eastern forested area; the western part of the plains has so dry a climate that its herbage is scanty, and in the south it is barren.

It is a peculiar feature of the drainage in North Carolina that the headwaters lie to the east of the highest mountains, and that the chief rivers flow north-westward through the mountains to the broad valley lowland of the stratified belt and then through the plateau, as the members of the Mississippi system.

The cuesta begins where its determining limcstone begins, in west-central New York; there it separates the lowlands that contain the basins of lakes Ontario and Erie; thence it curves to the north-west through the province of Ontario to the belt of islands that divide1 Georgian Bay from Lake Huron; then westward throtigh the land-arm between lakes Superior and Michigan, and south-westward into the narrow points that divide Green Bay from Lake Michigan, and at last westward to fade away again with the thinning out of the limestone; it is hardly traceable across the Mississippi river.

The Prairie States.The originally treeless prairies of the upper Mississippi basin began in Indiana and extended westward and north-westward until they merged with the drier region described Leyond as the Great Plains.

When the ice sheets fronted on land sloping southward to the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the drift-laden streams flowed freely away from the ice border; and as the streams, escaping from their subglacial channels, spread in broader channels, they ordinarily could not carry forward all their load; hence they acted not as destructive but as constructive agents, and aggraded their courses.

Certain extraordinary features were produced when the retreat of the ice sheet had progressed so far as to open an eastward outlet for the marginal lakes along the depression between the northward slope of the Appalachian plateau in west-central New York and the southward slope of the melting ice sheet; for when this eastward outlet came to be lower than the south-westward outlet across the height of land to the Ohio or Mississippi river, the discharge of the marginal lakes was changed from the Mississippi system to the Hudson system.

A curious deposit of an impalpably fine and unstratified silt, known by the German name bess, lies on the older drift sheets near the larger river courses of the upper Mississippi basin.

The course of the upper Mississippi river is largely consequent i upon glacial deposits.

The course of the Mississippi through Minnesota is largely guided by the form of the drift cover.

Farther south, as far as the entrance of the Ohio, the Mississippi follows a rock-walled valley 300 to 400 ft.

The special features of the Gulf Plain are the peninsular extension of the plain in Florida, the belted arrangement of relief and soils in Alabama and in Texas, and the Mississippi embayment or inland extension of the plain half-way up the course of the Mississippi river, with the Mississippi flood plain there included.

A typical example of a belted coastal plain is found in Alabama and the adjacent part of Mississippi.

In the embayment of the coastal plain some low cuesta-like belts of hills with associated strips of lowlands suggest the features of a beltedcoastal plain; the hillybeltordissected cuesta determined by the Grand Gulf formation in western Mississippi is the most distinct.

The most striking feature of the embayment is the broad valley which the Mississippi has eroded across it.

The h L lower Mississippi receives no large tributary from the T e ower east, but two important ones come from the west; the Mississippi Arkansas drainage area being a little less than that River.

The head of the coastal plain embayment is near the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi.

This valley in the coastal plain, with the much narrower rock-walled valley of the upper river in the prairie states, is the true valley of the S3ississippi river; but in popular phrase the Mississippi valley is taken to include a large central part of the Mississippi drainage basin.

The floods of the Mississippi usually occur in spring or aummer; Owing to the great size of the drainage basin, it seldom happens that the three upper tributaries are in flood at the same time; the coincident occurrence of floods in only two tributaries is of serious import in the lower river, which rises 30, 40, or occasionally 50 ft.

The Mississippi has already been mentioned as rapidly building forward its digitate delta; the Rio Granide, next in size, has built its delta about 50 m.

The middle portion contains much limestone, generally known as the Niagara limestone, and is mtich more widespread than the lower, being found very generally over the eastern interior, as far west as the Mississippi and in places somewhat beyond.

The system is well developed in the Mississippi Basin, whence its name, Its formations are much more widespread than those of any other system since the Ordovician.

In the Mississippi Basin the larger part of the system is of limestone, though there is some clastic mateiial in both its basal and its upper parts.

West of the Mississippi the Coal Measures are subdivided into two series, the Des Moines below and the Missouri above.

The system has much more considerable development west of the Mississippi than east of it, especially in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and beyond.

Loess is widespread in the Mississippi River basin, especially along the larger streams which flowed from the ice.

This section is fairly representative for much of the central Mississippi Basin.

The warmed air of summer produces an area of low pressure in the west-central United States, which interrupts the belt of high pressure that planetary conditions alone would form around the earth about latitude 30; hence there is a tendency of the summer winds to blow inward from the northern Pacific over the Cordilleras toward the continental centre, and from the trades of the torrid Atlantic up the Mississippi Valley; conversely in winter time, the cold air over the lands produces a large area of high pressure from which the winds tend to flow outward; thus repelling the westerly winds of the northern Pacific and greatly intensifying the outflow southward to the Gulf of Mexico and eastward to the Atlantic. As a result of these seasonal alternations of temperature and pressure there is something of a monsoon tendency developed in the winds of the Mississippi Valley, southerly infiowing winds prevailing in summer and northerly outfiowing winds in winter; but the general tendency to inflow and outflow is greatly modified by the relief of the lands, to which we next turn.

Thus the heaviest measured rainfall east of the Mississippi is on the southern Appalachians; while in the west, where observations are as yet few at high level stations, the occurrence of forests and pastures on the higher slopes of mountains which rise from desert plains clearly testifies to the same rule.

The region east of the Mississippi is singularly favored in this way; for it receives a good amount of rainfall, well distribu ted through the year, and indeed is in this respect one of the largest regions in the temperate zones that are so well watered.

It is the home of the southern fox-squirrel, Cotton rat, ricefield rat, wood rat, free-tailed bat, mocking bird, painted bunting, prothonotary warbler, red-cockaded woodpecker, chuckwills-widow, and the swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites.

The achievement of independence found the people of the United States owning the entire country between the Gulf and the Great Lakes, excepting only Florida, as far to the west as the Mississippi; but the actual settlements were, with a few minor exceptions, confined to a strip of territory along the Atlantic shore.

Finally, there were in 1790 about a score of small trading or military posts, mainly of French origin, scattered over the then almost unbroken wilderness of the upper Mississippi Valley and region of the Great Lakes.

In the decade1890-1900the increase of the South exceeded slightly that of the North for the same period owing to the rapid development in recent years of the Southern states west of the Mississippi, which only the Western group, has exceeded since 1870.1 In general the increase of the two sections every 1000 in the South was as follows from 1790 to 1900

At the other extreme, Mississippi had only 3% of urban citizens.

The first English settlers on the Atlantic bartered lead of domestic origin with the Indians in the 17th century, and so did the French in the upper Mississippi Valley.

The ore of the metal occurring in the Mississippi basingalena----is scattered widely and in large quantities, and being easily smelted by the roughest possible methods was much used at an early date.

A rapid development of the lead mines of the West, both in Missouri and on the Upper Mississippi in the region where Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois adjoin one another, took place during the first quarter of the I9th century, and as early as 1826 or 1827 the amount of this metal obtained had risen to nearly 10,000 tons a year.

The development of the coal and iron interests, and the increasing importance of the gold product of the Appalachian auriferous belt, and also of the lead product of the Mississippi Valley, led to a more general and decided interest in geology and mining; and about 1830 geological surveys of several of the Atlantic states were begun, and more systematic explorations for the ores of the metals, as well as for coal, were carried on over all parts of the country then open to settlement.

The lead production of the Missouri mines had for some years been nearly stationary, or had declined slightly from its former importance; while that of the upper Mississippi region, which in the years just previous to 1850 had risen to from 20,000 to 25,000 tons a year, was declining, having in 1850 sunk to less than 18,000 tons.

The North Atlantic and the North Central census groups of states (that is, the territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers, and north of Maryland) produced two-thirds of the total output.

Geologically the anthracite and bituminous coals mainly belong to the same formation, the Carboniferous, and this is especially true of the better qualities; though it is stated by the United States Geological Survey that the geQlogic age of the coal beds ranges from Carboniferous in the Appalachian and Mississippi Valley provinces to Miocene (Tertiary) on the Pacific coast, and that the quality of the coal varies only to a very uncertain degree with the geologic age.

The Great Lakes are connected by canals with the Atlantic, the St Lawrence river and the Mississippi; the connection with the first being through the Erie Canal, a 7-ft.

The connection with the Mississippi is through the drainage-canal of Chicago, and thence into branches of the Mississippi affording as yet even less water than the Atlantic outlet.

Three of the original thirteen have their judges elected by the legislatures, and in five others, together with Maine and Mississippi among the newer states, they are appointed by the governor, subject to the approval of the executive council, the Senate, or (in Connecticut) the General Assembly.

The St Lawrence varies only a few feet in the year and always has pellucid bluish-green water, while the Mississippi, whose tributaries begin only a short distance south of the Great Lakes, varies 40 f t.

By 1659 two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseillers, had penetrated beyond the great lakes to the prairies of the far West; they were probably the first Europeans to see the Mississippi.

In 1682 he accomplished his task, took possession of the valley of the Mississippi in the name of Louis XIV.

The danger from the Iroquois on Lake Ontario had long cut her off from the most direct access to the West, and from the occupation of the Ohio valley leading to the Mississippi, but now free from this savage scourge she could go where she would.

In the south of the continent France also crowned La Salle's work by founding early in the 18th century New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi.

She continued her work of building a line of forts on the great lakes - on the river Niagara, on the Ohio, on the Mississippi; and the English colonies, with the enemy thus in their rear, grew ever more restive.

Under this act the western territory which France had claimed, extending as far as the Mississippi and south to the Ohio, was included with Canada in what was called the Province of Quebec. This vast territory was to be governed despotically from Quebec; the Roman Catholic church was given its old privileges in Canada; and the French civil law was established permanently side by side with the English criminal law.

Its total length is about 2000 m., and its drainage basin (greater than that of the Upper Mississippi) about 185,000 sq.

By way of the White river cut-off the Arkansas finds an additional outlet through the valley of that river in times of high water, and the White, when the current in its natural channel is deadened by the backwaters of the Mississippi, finds an outlet by the same cut-off through the valley of the Arkansas.

At the mouth of the White, the Arkansas and the Mississippi the level of recurrent floods is 6 or 8 f t.

The peace of Paris, in 1763, terminated the French occupation, and England came into undisputed possession of the region between the Chattahoochee and the Mississippi.

Georgia likewise claimed all the lands between the 31st and 35th parallels from its present western boundary to the Mississippi river, and did not surrender its claim until 1802; two years later the boundaries of the Mississippi Territory were extended so as to include all of the Georgia cession.

In 1812 Congress annexed to the Mississippi Territory the Mobile District of West Florida, claiming that it was included in the Louisiana Purchase; and in the following year General James Wilkinson occupied this district with a military force, the Spanish commandant offering no resistance.

In 1817 the Mississippi Territory was divided; the western portion became the state of Mississippi, and the eastern the territory of Alabama, with St Stephens, on the Tombigbee river, as the temporary seat of government.

Hwang Ho = Yellow river, Missouri = Big Muddy, the Red river, &c. It has been estimated that the Mississippi annually carries 4064 million tons of sediment to the sea; the Hwang Ho 796 million tons; the Po 67 million tons.

The flood-plain of the Mississippi has an area of 50,000 sq.

In 1899-1904 the crop exceeded that of the other cotton-producing states except Texas, and in 1899, 1900 and 1903 Mississippi, averaging 1,467,121 commercial bales per annum; the crop in 1904 was 1,991,719 bales, and in 1907-1908 the crop was 1,815,834 bales, second only to the crop of Texas.

Several cessions were made between 1802 and 1824, but the state in the latter year remonstrated in vigorous terms against the dilatory manner in which the National government was discharging its obligation, and the effect of this was that in 1825 a treaty was negotiated at Indian Springs by which nearly all the Lower Creeks agreed to exchange their remaining lands in Georgia for equal territory beyond the Mississippi.

Geomys bursaries, the "red pocket-gopher" of North America, with deeply grooved incisors, inhabits the plains of the Mississippi, living in burrows like the mole.

Porter was promoted commander on the 22nd of April, and on the 30th of May was sent to blockade the South-West Pass of the Mississippi.

On the 15th of October he took command of the gun-vessels which had been built on the upper waters of the Mississippi, and to which he made important additions at an improvised navy-yard at Mound City, Illinois.

Porter received the thanks of Congress for "opening the Mississippi River" and was promoted rear-admiral.

The state ranks second to New York in the value of its manufactures, which increased from $155,044,910 in 1850 to $1,955,551,332 (factory products alone) in 1905, a growth which has been promoted by an abundance of fuel, by a good port on the Atlantic seaboard, by a network of eanals which in the early years was of much importance in connecting the port with the Mississippi river system, by its frontage on Lake Erie which makes the ores of the Lake Superior region easily accessible, and by a great railway system which has been built to meet the demands arising from the natural resources.

In 1712 a settlement was made on the present site, being the first permanent settlement within what is now the state of Mississippi.

Many of the early settlers were French Canadians, who came down the Mississippi to join the new colony.

Lebanon is the seat of McKendree College, founded by Methodists in 1828 and one of the oldest colleges in the Mississippi valley.

In 1673 he was chosen with Joliet for the exploration of the Mississippi, of which the French had begun to gain knowledge from Indians of the central prairies.

The route taken lay up the north-west side of Lake Michigan, up Green Bay and Fox river, across Lake Winnebago, over the portage to the Wisconsin river, and down the latter into the Mississippi, which was descended to within 700 m.

Entering the Mississippi on the 17th of May, Joliet and his companion turned back on the 17th of July, and returned to Green Bay and Michigan (by way of the Illinois river) at the end of September 1673.

See Marquette's Journal, first published in Melchissedech Thevenot's Recueil de Voyages (Paris, 1681), and fully given in Martin's Relations inedites, and in Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley (New York, 1852); cf.

Two years were spent by them in travels in New England, the region of the Great Lakes, and of the Mississippi; then the news of the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire decided them to return to Europe.

Being now twenty-one years of age, Abraham hired himself to Denton Offutt, a migratory trader and storekeeper then of Sangamon county, and he helped Offutt to build a flatboat and float it down the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans.

There was much opposition in these states to such a course, but the secessionists triumphed, and by the time President Lincoln was inaugurated, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas had formally withdrawn from the Union.

On the 1st day of January 1863 the final proclamation of emancipation was duly issued, designating the States of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and certain portions of Louisiana and Virginia, as "this day in rebellion against the United States," and proclaiming that, in virtue of his authority as commander-inchief, and as a necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion, "I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free," and pledging the executive and military power of the government to maintain such freedom.

The reduction of Vicksburg (4th of July) and Port Hudson (9th of July), with other operations, restored complete control of the Mississippi, severing the Southern Confederacy.

Sherman, commanding the bulk of the Union forces in the Mississippi Valley, swept in a victorious march through the heart of the Confederacy to Savannah on the coast, and thence northward to North Carolina.

From its centre at Quebec French civilization extended along the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and also northwards to Hudson's Bay.

That of the Mississippi below Ohio has a width of from 20 to 80 m., and its whole extent has been estimated at 50,000 sq.

Under the influence of Howell Cobb of Georgia, secretary of the treasury, and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, secretary of the interior, the president was convinced that it was the only way to avoid civil war.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819 and practised law in Pittsburg from 1822 to 1826, when he removed to Mississippi.

Slocum's order forbidding the organization of militia in Mississippi, and Schurz's valuable report (afterwards published as an executive document), suggesting the readmission of the states with complete rights and the investigation of the need of further legislation by a Congressional committee, was not heeded by the President.

The Enabling Act of Congress, which provided for the organization of Illinois Territory into a state, extended its jurisdiction to the middle of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi river; consequently the total area of the state is 58,329 sq.

The southern point touches the Coastal Plain Belt at its northward extension called the "Mississippi Embayment."

There are more than 275 streams in the state, grouped in two river systems, one having the Mississippi, which receives three-fourths of the waters of Illinois, as outlet, the other being tributary to the Wabash or Ohio rivers.

The soil of the river valleys is alluvial and especially fertile, the "American Bottom," extending along the Mississippi from Alton to Chester, having been in cultivation for more than 150 years.

The warm winds which sweep up the Mississippi Valley from the Gulf of Mexico are responsible for the extremes of heat, and the Arctic winds of the north, which find no mountain range to break their strength, cause the extremes of cold.

The first European settlers, who were French, came by way of the Great Lakes, and established intimate relations with New Orleans by the Mississippi river.

The first transportation problem was to connect Lake Michigan and the Mississippi river; this was accomplished by building the Illinois & Michigan canal to La Salle, at the head of the navigation on the Illinois river, a work which was begun in 1836 and completed in 1848 under the auspices of the state.

This canal provides, with the Illinois & Michigan canal and the Illinois river, an improved waterway from Chicago to the Mississippi river, and greatly increases the commercial and industrial importance of the "twin cities" of Sterling and Rock Falls, where the Rock river is dammed by a dam nearly 1500 ft.

In 1659 Pierre Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers seem to have reached the upper Mississippi.

In 1673 Marquette, under orders to begin a mission to the Indians, who were known to the French by their visits to the French settlements in the Lake Superior region, and Louis Joliet, who acted under orders of Jean Talon, Intendant of Canada, ascended the Fox river, crossed the portage between it and the Wisconsin river, and followed that stream to the Mississippi, which they descended to a point below the mouth of the Arkansas.

In 1679 the explorer La Salle, desiring to find the mouth of the Mississippi and to extend the domain of France in America, ascended the St Joseph river, crossed the portage separating it from the Kankakee, which he descended to the Illinois, and built in the neighbourhood of Lake Peoria a fort which he called Fort Crevecceur.

Chief of these were Kaskaskia, established near the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, about 1720; Cahokia, a little below the mouth of the Missouri river, founded at about the same time; and Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi between Cahokia and Kaskaskia, founded in 1720 to be a link in a chain of fortifications intended to extend from the St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.

The trade of the Illinois country was now diverted to the settlements in the lower Mississippi river, but the French, although they were successful in gaining the confidence and friendship of the Indians, failed to develop the resources of the country.

By the treaty of Paris, 1763, France ceded to Great Britain her claims to the country between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, but on account of the resistance of Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas who drew into conspiracy most of the tribes between the Ottawa river and the lower Mississippi, the English were not able to take possession of the country until 1765, when the French flag was finally lowered at Fort Chartres.

The reason given for this change was that if the Mississippi and Ohio rivers were the only outlets of Illinois trade, the interests of the state would become identified with those of the southern states; but if an outlet by Lake Michigan were provided, closer relations would be established with the northern and middle states, and so "additional security for the perpetuity of the Union" would be afforded.

In 1819, after long negotiations, Adams succeeded in bringing the Spanish minister to the point of signing a treaty in which the Spaniards abandoned all claims to territory east of the Mississippi, and the United States relinquished all claim to what is now known as Texas.

It prefers a deep, rich, warm, dry and mellow soil, and hence the rich bottoms and fertile prairies of the Mississippi basin constitute the region of its greatest production.

This provision was defeated in 1784, but was adopted in 1787 for the north-western territory - a step which is very often said to have saved the Union in the Civil War; the south-western territory (out of which were later formed Mississippi, Alabama, &c.) being given over to slavery.

He was instructed to endeavour to bring Spain into the treaty already existing between France and the United States by a guarantee that Spain should have the Floridas in case of a successful issue of the war against Great Britain, reserving, however, to the United States the free navigation of the Mississippi.

In May the king's minister, Count de Florida Blanca, intimated to him that the one obstacle to a treaty was the question of the free navigation of the Mississippi, and for months following this interview the policy of the court was clearly one of delay.

In February 1781 Congress instructed Jay that he might make concessions regarding the navigation of the Mississippi, if necessary; but further delays were interposed, the news of the surrender of Yorktown arrived, and Jay decided that any sacrifice to obtain a treaty was no longer advisable.

Owing to the encroachments of the Mississippi river, the site of the first permanent settlement of New Madrid is said to lie now about 12 m.

This settlement was made in 1788, on an elaborately laid out town site, and was named New Madrid by its founder, Colonel George Morgan (1742-1810), 1 who, late in 1787, had received a grant of a large tract of land on the right bank of the Mississippi river, below the mouth of the Ohio, from Don Diego de Gardoqui, Spanish minister to the United States.

There were Confederate batteries on the left bank of the Mississippi opposite Island No.

In July 1838 he was appointed second lieutenant of Topographical Engineers in the United States army, and for the next three years he was assistant to the French explorer, Jean Nicholas Nicollet (1786-1843), employed by the war department to survey and map a large part of the country lying between the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Benton of Missouri, and it was in no small measure through Benton's influence with the government that Fremont was enabled to accomplish within the next few years the exploration of much of the territory between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Ocean.

He was in Congress during the final stages of the War of Independence, and in 1780 drafted instructions to Jay, then representing the United States at Madrid, that in negotiations with Spain he should insist upon the free navigation of the Mississippi and upon the principle that the United States succeeded to British rights affirmed by the treaty of Paris of 1763.

During Jefferson's presidency and whilst Madison was secretary of state, by the purchase of Louisiana, Madison's campaign begun in i 780 for the free navigation of the Mississippi was brought to a successful close.

In the great causes for which Madison fought in his earlier years - religious freedom and separation of church and state, the free navigation of the Mississippi, and the adoption of the constitution - he met with success.

Arkansas lies in the drainage basin of the lower Mississippi, and has a remarkable river system.

The surface of Arkansas is the most diversified of that of any state in the central Mississippi valley.

The valley region embraces the bottom-lands along the Mississippi, and up the Arkansas as far as Pine Bluff, and the cypress swamp country of the St Francis.

The leading species of the Appalachian woodland maintain their full vigour of growth nearer to the margin of forest growth in this part of the Mississippi valley than in any other part of the United States; and some species, such as the holly, the osage orange and the pecan, attain their fullest growth in Arkansas (Shaler).

It is the shipping point of the Bedford Indiana (oolitic) limestone, which is found in the vicinity and is one of the most valuable and best known building stones in the United States - of this stone were built the capitols of Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Kentucky; the state historical library at Madison, Wisconsin; the art building at St Louis, Missouri; and many other important public buildings.

He had great energy and administrative ability, was for a time president of the Chicago & Rock Island and of the Mississippi & Missouri railways, first president of the Union Pacific in 1863-1868, and for a short time in 1872 president of the Erie.

Early in the 17th century trading posts and mission centres were established on the coast of Maine, and during the same century French priests laboured zealously in northern New York, along the entire coast of the Mississippi from Wisconsin to Louisiana, and around the Great Lakes.

Colorado holds the same supremacy for coal and coke west of the Mississippi that Pennsylvania holds for the country as a whole.

She studied the remains of Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, and worked and lived with the Omahas as a representative of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

It is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the St Louis & San Francisco, the Illinois Central, the Southern, the Louisville & Nashville, the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis, the St Louis South-Western, the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railways, and by steamboats on the Mississippi.

Owing to its situation at the head of deep water navigation on the Mississippi, Memphis has become a leading commercial city of the southern states; its trade in cotton, lumber, groceries, mules and horses is especially large.

By a treaty of the 19th of October 1818, negotiated by General Andrew Jackson and General Isaac Shelby, the Chickasaws ceded all their claims east of the Mississippi, and early in 1819 Memphis was laid out in accordance with an agreement entered into by John Overton (1766-1833), Andrew Jackson and James Winchester (1752-1826), the proprietors of the land.

Its name was suggested from the similarity of its situation on the Mississippi to that of the Egyptian city on the Nile.

During the eighteen years in which he held this post he rendered valuable services to the territory and to the nation; he extinguished the Indian title to large tracts of land, instituted surveys, constructed roads, and explored the lakes and sources of the Mississippi river.

Melaconite was formerly largely worked in the Lake Superior region, and is abundant in some of the mines of Tennessee and the Mississippi valley.

It has a picturesque situation in what is known as "the Four-Lakes region"; this region takes its name from a chain of lakes, Kegonsa, Waubesa, Monona and Mendota, which, lying in the order named and connected with one another by the Yahara or Catfish River, form the head-waters of Rock river flowing southward through Illinois into the Mississippi.

He served on the committee which drafted the Articles of Confederation, and contended that there should be no treaty of peace with Great Britain which did not grant to the United States both the right to the Newfoundland fisheries and the free navigation of the Mississippi.

It is served by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railway and by the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company; and the Texas & Pacific enters Port Allen, just across the river.

In 1820 he accompanied General Lewis Cass as geologist in his expedition to the Upper Mississippi and the Lake Superior copper region, and in 1823 he was appointed Indian agent for the Lake Superior country.

In 1832, when on an embassy to some Indians, he ascertained the real source of the Mississippi to be Lake Itasca.

In 1825 he published Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, and in 1839 appeared his Algic Researches, containing Indian legends, notably, "The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends."

His exact route is often doubtful; but it seems to have passed north into Georgia as far as 35' N., then south to the neighbourhood of Mobile, and finally north-west towards the Mississippi.

This river was reached early in 1541, and the following winter was spent on the Ouachita, in modern Arkansas and Louisiana, west of the Mississippi.