THE FATHER OF WATERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 106, 8 May 1875, Page 9

THE FATHER OF WATERS.

BANCROFT'S DESCRIPTION OF THE MISSISSIPPI— THE BOND OP THE AMERICAN UNION. In the tenth volume (just issued) of Bancroft's History of the United States, occurs the following striking description ot the Mississippi: — ' " The Mississippi Eiver is the guardian and pledge of the union of the States of America. Had they been confined to the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies, there would have been no geographical unity between them, and the thread of connection between lands that merely fringed the Atlantic must soon have been sundered. The Father of Eivexs gathers his waters from all the clouds that break between the Alleghanies and the furthest ranges of the Eockey Mountains. The ridges of the eastern chain bow then- heads at the north, and at the south j sothat, long before science became the companion of man, nature herself pointed out to the barbarous races how short portages join his tributary rivers to the shore of the Atlantic coast. At the other side his mightiest arms interlock with the arms of the Oregon and the Colorado, and by the conformation of the earth itself marshals highways to the Pacific. From his remotest springs he refuses to suffer his waters to be divided ; but, as he bears them all to the bosom of the ocean, the myriads of flags that wave above his head are'all the ensigns of one people. States, larger than kingdoms, flourish where he passes ,• and beneath his step cities start into being more marvellous in their reality tban the fabled creations of enchantment. His magnificent valley, lying in the best part of the I temperate zone, salubrious and wonderfully fertile, is the chosen muster-ground of the most various elements of human culture, brought together by men summoned from all the civilised nations of the earth, and joined in the bonds of common citizenship by the strong, invisible attraction of republican freedom. Now that science has come to be the household friend of trade and commerce and travel, and that nature has lent to wealth and intellect the use of her constant forces, the hills, once walls of divisions, are scaled or pierced, or levelled ; and the two oceans, between which the Kepubnc has unassailably entrenched itself against the outer world, are bound together across the continent by friendly links of iron."