Mark Twain

Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain

THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary isin all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in theworld-four thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in 3the world, since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover thesame ground that the crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three timesas much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and three hundred andthirty-eight times as much as the Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws itswater supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, andfrom all the country between that and Idaho on the Pacific slope-a spread of forty-five degrees oflongitude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate riversthat are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. Thearea of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region isfertile; the Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so