506 LIFE ON ?HM MISSISSIPPI.

CHAPTER LTIII.
ON THE UPPER RIVER.
THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now : and between stretch
processions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour by hour,
the boat ploughs deeper and deeper into the great and populous North-
west ; and with each successive section of it which is revealed, one's
surprise and respect gather emphasis and increase. Such a people,
and such achievements as theirs, compel homage. This is an indepen-
dent race who think for themselves, and who are competent to do it,
because they are educated and enlightened; they read, they keep
abreast of the best and newest thought, they fortify every weak place
in their land with a school, a college, a library, and a newspaper; an<i
they live under law. Solicitude for the future of a race like this is not
in order.
This region is new; so new that it may be said to be still in its
babyhood. By what it has accomplished while still teething, one
may forecast what marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity.
It is so new that the foreign tourist has not heard of it yet; and
has not visited it. For sixty years, the foreign tourist has steamed
up and down the river between St. Louis and New Orleans, and then
gone home and written his book, believing he had seen all of tihe
river that was worth seeing or that had anything to see* In not ak
of all these books is there mention of these Upper Kiver towns—for
the reason that the five or six tourists who penetrated this region did
it before these towns were projected. The latest tourist of them all
(1878) made the same old regulation trip—he had not heard that
ihere was anything north of St. Louis.
Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling witb