11 The Father of Waters

The biggest bay in the United States I told you is called “the Mother of Waters.” The biggest river in the United States is called “the Father of Waters.” Although the river is called a “father,” he is not a Mr. He is a “Miss.” In the Indian language he is Miss—issippi,and is spelled in this jingly way:

M

i double s

i double s

i double p

i

which is very easy to learn.

If I asked you to draw a picture of a river, and also of a tree without any leaves on it, you would probably draw the tree this way—a main stem, with big branches, and big branches with little branches, and little branches with tiny branches—like the picture to the left. And you would probably draw the picture of the river as just a wiggly line—now wouldn't you? As a matter of fact, the picture of a tree and the picture of a river should be drawn exactly the same way, for they each have a main stem with big branches, big branches with little branches, and little branches with tiny branches—although you may not see all the branches in the picture of a river on the map.

But there is this big difference between a tree and a river:

A tree grows from the bottom to the top of its branches.

A river flows from the top of its branches to the bottom. The sap runs up a tree, water runs down a river. If a river were just a single line and had no branches at all, it would be just as big at the finish as at the start. It's the river's branches that make it bigger and bigger. The biggest river in the United States, the Mississippi, starts almost at the top of our country, at a little lake called Itasca, in the State of Minnesota, and flows all the way to the bottom of our country, getting bigger and bigger all the time as its branches flow into it, until at last it reaches a corner of the ocean we call the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River really cuts our country into two parts, but the two parts are not the same size. The part west of the Mississippi is about twice as big as the part east of the Mississippi.

The Mississippi River hardly gets a good running start on its long journey south to the Gulf of Mexico before it falls down, and where it falls men have built big mills, the wheels of which are turned by the falling water. These mills, however, are not like those in New England. They do not make things. They grind wheat to make flour to make bread, for more and better wheat grows near where the Mississippi starts and the States near-by than anywhere else in the whole World.

An acre seems to me, who lives in a city, a large piece of ground, a hundred acres seems immense, and a thousand acres seems enormous, but some farms in Minnesota where they raise wheat have as many as ten thousand acres of wheat in a single farm! The farmers would never get through planting or gathering the wheat if they did so by hand or even with a horse. So they plow with an engine and often with ten plows in a row, and they use machines for gathering the wheat and for separating the grains of the wheat from the straw, which has to be done before it can be ground into flour.

On opposite sides of the Mississippi near these falls two large cities of almost the same size have grown up. These two cities are connected by a bridge, and they are so nearly the same size they are called Twin Cities. One of them is named Minneapolis, which means “Water City,” as Annapolis means “Anna's City”; and the other is named St. Paul. Notice that almost all names around the Great Lakes and the Mississippi are named either after saints or after Indians. That's because priests were among the first to come to this country to make the Indians Christians, and they named places either after the Indians or after the Christian saints.

The water city—Minneapolis—is the greatest flour-making place in the whole World. I have to say “in the whole World” so often, I'm going to use only the first letters from now on—i for “in,” t for “the,” w for “whole,” W for “World” —thus: i.t.w.W. Minneapolis is the greatest flour-making place i.t.w.W. Minnesota and the States near it are the greatest wheat-raising States i.t.w.W.

As the Mississippi River flows south toward the Gulf of Mexico it passes other cities, but the biggest one is St. Louis, about half-way down. St. Louis—another saint—is near the two biggest branches of the Mississippi River—the Missouri, which comes in from the west, and the Ohio, which comes in from the east—both rivers named after States and both States named after the Indians. The Missouri is such a big branch that it is hard to tell whether it is a branch of the Mississippi or the Mississippi is a branch of it. Indeed, if you can find where the Missouri River begins you will see that from that point to the end of the Mississippi the river is much longer than the Mississippi itself—it is over 4, 000 miles—so the Missouri-Mississippi together is the longest river i.t.w.W.

The Mississippi gets bigger and bigger as it gets more and more branches, and in the spring when the snow melts and the rain rains so hard and flows down into the branches, the river swells and swells until it finally bursts over its banks and floods the country. So, down where this is likely to happen, men have built banks along the river on each side, to hold the water in. These banks are called levees; but sometimes the river grows too big and strong even for these levees to hold it in, and the river breaks through or over the top and floods the country. If there happen to be any farms or houses or towns with people in them, the water washes houses away and drowns people and animals, and destroys thousands upon thousands of farms and other property.

The Mississippi near its end passes the city called New Orleans and at last flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The end of a river where it flows into the sea is called its mouth. I never knew why, because a mouth is where water flows in, not where it flows out. At any rate, the Mississippi has several mouths instead of one mouth, for the water in the river brings along with it so much mud that it settles right in the way of the river's mouth and forms mud islands which the river has to go round, so the river blocks itself.

Where the Mississippi begins in the far north of the United States it is very cold in winter, but as the river flows farther and farther south it gets warmer and warmer and warmer. This warm country is nicknamed “Dixie.” When the river is near its end at New Orleans, flowers bloom even at Christmas and it is warm all the year round. Where the river begins you see white people in the fields and on the shores, but when it gets down south in Dixie Land you see more and more colored people working in the fields. The chief thing they are doing is growing cotton, for “Dixie Land,” as the song says, is way down south “in the land of cotton,” and more cotton is grown here than anywhere else i.t.w.W. Strange to say, there was no cotton in America at first. A cotton plant was brought first to Maryland from the other side of the world and grown only for its pretty flowers.

Cotton grows on a low bush in little white balls, and inside each white ball are troublesome little seeds. The cotton is picked off the bush and then these seeds have to be picked out of the cotton before it can be made into cotton thread, and then into cotton cloth, and then into cotton clothes, sheets, towels—can you think of anything else made out of cotton? Things made of cotton were once very expensive, because it took such a long time to pick the seeds out of the cotton, but a school-teacher—a man—invented a way to pick the seeds out by a machine—an “engine” which the colored people called “a gin,” for short, and now cotton goods can be made very cheaply. Indeed, it is now hard to understand how we ever got along without cotton, for this little plant that was once grown only for its flowers is used in more things and in more ways than anything that grows out of the ground. This is why it is often called “King Cotton.”