can you tell me why we have been obliged to walk? and why the boatmen took their boat out of the water, and carried it, instead of letting it carry them and us? The boat could not have come down the falls without being dashed to pieces, and we might all have been drowned.

10. As we go on from this place, we find many rapids and falls hindering our way; and we pass among lovely islands in the bed of the stream, which has now deepened, and spread out into a large river. The country through which it flows is no longer covered with forests; but farms, villages, and cities take their place, just as on the rivers in the Atlantic Plain.

11. By and by, after many and many a day, we find

a busy, bustling city occupying both sides of the river, across which a number of bridges have been built. These are broad and strong, and make a way for railroads and street cars, as well as for people and carriages, to cross the stream, and great numbers of people pass continually.

12. This is the city of Minneapolis; and here are the Falls of St. Anthony, the last which the river makes in its course toward the sea. The people who first came here saw what a fine place this would be to build mills; for the water could be made to turn a vast number of mill wheels. And now the banks are crowded with mills, and the falls are hidden by timbers, so that one can hardly see any of the original view. Here our first river trip must end,—hundreds of miles from its beginning.

13. Only ten miles farther down the river, is another great city named St. Paul, to which we will go in a carriage. From St. Paul, the whole voyage to the sea can be made by steamboat.

VIII. - FROM ST. PAUL TO ST. LOUIS. prai'-rie.

dan'-ger-ous.

Mis-sou'-ri [soo'-].

1. FROM the little lake which makes the cradle of the Mississippi, all the way to Minneapolis, groves of trees are everywhere in sight; and, once, nearly that whole country was covered with forests. Southward from this place, even before the white men came to cut down the trees, there were great treeless spaces, covered with rich grass and bright flowers.

2. When the first white man saw these grassy plains along the Mississippi, he called them prairies; which, in his language, was the name for meadows. They were everywhere so smooth and green, and the low, round hills here and there, with their clusters of trees, looked so much like orchards, that it seemed almost as if people had lived here a great while ago, and planted these trees, and leveled these beautiful prairies.

3. One might have traveled many miles, east and west and south, and found them everywhere the same. Many beautiful birds hid in the grass, or went hopping about after the seeds and the insects on which they fed. There were also great herds of buffaloes, that fed upon the prairie grass; and curious little animals, called prairie dogs, made their burrows together, like the houses of a village.

4. Sometimes in the summer, when the grass was very dry, a little spark from a hunter's gun or pipe would set it on fire. Then the flame rushed over miles and miles of land, burning every blade of grass, and every tree and shrub; and even the animals could not always get out of the way of the fire, which went as fast as the wind. The burning prairie looks very grand; but when the flame is gone, and only the bare black earth is left, it is very dreary.

5. The prairie country, in winter, was sometimes one vast sheet of snow, with only here and there a house dotting it, and not a tree nor a fence to mark one place from another. It was very dangerous then for people to try to cross the prairies; for as the roads were covered with snow, and there was nothing to mark their place, travelers sometimes got lost, and were frozen to death.

6. Now all this is changed; and along the Mississippi and far westward, where once the wild prairies bloomed, there are busy cities, and pretty villages, and great farms with immense fields of wheat and corn, stretching as far as the eye can reach. Throughout the prairie country, the gently-sloping banks of the Mississippi are interrupted by steep walls, that rise on each side far above the water, as though a pathway had been cut for it, deep below the surface of the plain. These high steep slopes are called bluffs.

7. The bluffs do not rise close along both banks of the river. They are separated by a broad band of land, so low and flat as to be always overflowed when the water is a little higher than usual. This is called bottom land. Some parts of it are great marshes, covered with tall grass, or with thickets of cane that look

something like fields of corn, though the cane is much higher than the tallest corn. Other parts are covered

with dense forests.

8. The river has now become very large; and, though there are no waterfalls or rapids, it still flows quite swiftly. Its course, too, is very winding. In some places, it glides in curves through the middle of the bottom lands; in others, its path is directly under the foot of the bluffs, which it is all the time washing and wearing away, carrying down to the sea the earth and rocks that fall from them.

9. Great trees, too, have the earth thus washed away from them, and are carried downward by the waters. Sometimes their roots become fastened to the bottom of the river, while their sharp tops, pointed down stream, reach nearly or quite to the surface. These are called snags, and are very dangerous; for steamers going up stream may easily run against them and be wrecked.

10. When we have gone about half the length of the Mississippi, and have passed many rivers flowing into it from both east and west, we reach the mouth of the Missouri, its largest tributary. This stream is much wider than that part of the Mississippi above it, and twice as long. Missouri means great muddy; and as the broad mass of muddy water comes pouring into the clear Mississippi, we do not at all wonder at the name.