A Book of the United States Author:Grenville Mellen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV.—RIVERS. All the rivers of the United States, of the first magnitude, have their sources, either in the Rocky Mountains, or in elevated spurs proje... more »cting from the sides of that range. Many of the rivers which descend from the western sides of the Alleghanies are of inconsiderable volume, and by no means remarkable for the rapidity or the directness of their course. Those which flow from the eastern and southern sides of these mountains are worthy of extended description, even in the same pages with the great tributaries of the Mississippi. They afford the advantages of a good inland navigation to most parts of the states. I. RIVERS WHICH FLOW INTO THE MISSISSIPPI, AND THE GULF OF MEXICO. The Mississippi with its branches drains the great central basin which lies between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. This river has its rise in the table-lands within the territories of the United States, in north latitude forty-seven degrees and forty-seven minutes, at an altitude of thirteen hundred and thirty feet above the Atlantic, though the country at its source appears like a vast marshy valley. Mr. Schoolcraft fixes it in Cassina Lake, which is situated seventeen degrees north of the Balize on the gulf of Mexico, and two thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight miles, pursuing the course of the river. Estimating the distance to Lake La Beesh, its extreme north-weslern inlet at sixty miles, we have a result of three thousand and thirty-eight miles as the entire length of this wonderful river. Mr. Schoolcraft, in his very interesting Journal of Travels, observed that he believed there was no one then living, beside himself, who had visited both the sources and the mouth of this celebrated stream. As the description furnished by this gentleman is the clearest and most...« less