Part 20
In a subsequent conversation with two of his ministers, on the 10th of April, 1803, on the subject of the proposed cession, he said in speaking of England: “They shall not have the Mississippi which they covet.”
In accordance with this conclusion, on the 30th day of the same month, the sale was made to the United States. When informed that his instructions had been carried out and the treaty consummated, he remarked:
“This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride.”
Under the stimulating influence of American enterprise the commerce of the valley rapidly developed. In 1812 it entered upon a new era of progress by the introduction for the first time upon the waters of the Mississippi of steam transportation.
The river trade then grew from year to year, until the total domestic exports of its sole outlet at the sea-board--the port of New Orleans--had during the fiscal year 1855-56 reached the value of over $80,000,000. Its prestige was then eclipsed by railways, the first line reaching the Upper Mississippi in 1854, and the second the Lower Mississippi, at St. Louis in 1857. Says Poor:
“The line first opened in this state from Chicago to the Mississippi was the Chicago and Rock Island, completed in February, 1854. The completion of this road extended the railway system of the country to the Mississippi, up to this time the great route of commerce of the interior. This work, in connection with the numerous other lines since opened, has almost wholly diverted this commerce from what may be termed its natural to artificial channels, so that no considerable portion of it now flowed down the river to New Orleans.”
The correctness of this assertion may be seen by reference to the statistics of the total domestic exports of New Orleans during the year ending June 30, 1879. They were $63,794,000 in value, or $16,000,000 less than in 1856, when the rivalry with railways began.
But since 1879 the river has entered upon a new and important era. The successful completion of the jetties by Capt. Jas. B. Eads inaugurated a new era of river commerce and regained for it some of its lost prestige.
Another step of great importance to the welfare of the Mississippi was taken about this time. The control of its improvement was transferred by Congress to a board of skilled engineers known as the Mississippi River Commission. The various conflicting theories of improvement which have for years past done much to defeat the grand consummation desired will now be adjusted in a scientific and business-like manner.
Again, the rapidly growing popular demand throughout the United States for more intimate commercial relations with Mexico and the several sister nations of Central and South America, which lie opposite the mouth of this great River System, is stimulating the long-neglected longitude trade and thereby creating a new demand for new transportation on the longitudinal water-ways which comprise the Mississippi and its tributaries.
The Mississippi and tributaries considered as a drainage system, extend nearly the whole length of the United States from Canada to the Gulf, and across more than half its width, or from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to that of the Alleghanies.
Steamers can now transport freight in unbroken bulk from St. Anthony’s Falls to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 2,161 miles, and from Pittsburg to Fort Benton, Mont., 4,333 miles. Lighter craft can ascend the Missouri to Great Falls, near where that river leaves the Rocky Mountains.
THE ZAMBESI
HENRY DRUMMOND
Zambesi, the most important river on the East Coast of Africa, and the fourth largest on the continent, drains during its course of about 1,200 miles an area of 600,000 square miles. Its head-streams, which have not yet been fully explored, are the Leeambye, or Iambaji, rising in Cazembe’s country; the Lungebungo, which descends from the Mossamba Mountains; and the Leeba River, from the marshy Lake Dilolo (4,740 feet), situated between 10° and 12° south latitude and 22° and 23° east longitude. These three rivers, reinforced by the Nhengo, unite to form the upper Zambesi (Leeambye), which flows at first southwards and slightly eastwards through the Barotse valley, then turns prominently to the east near its junction with the Chobe (Chuando or Linianti), and passes over the Victoria Falls. Thence, as the middle reach of the Zambesi, the river sweeps north-east towards Zumbo and the Kebrabassa rapids above Tete, and finally forms the lower Zambesi, which curves southwards until it reaches the Indian Ocean at 18° 50′ south latitude. Fed chiefly from the highland country which stretches from Lake Nyassa to inner Angola, its chief tributaries are the Loängwa and the Shiré, the last an important river draining out of Lake Nyassa, and which in the dry season contains probably as great a volume of water as the Zambesi, and is much more navigable. Except for an interruption of seventy miles at the Murchison cataracts, the Shiré is open throughout its entire length to the lake.
On the whole the Zambesi has a gentle current, and flows through a succession of wide fertile valleys and richly wooded plains; but, owing to the terrace-like structure of the continent, the course of the river is interrupted from point to point by cataracts and rapids. These form serious, and in some cases insurmountable, hindrances to navigation. Those on the lower Zambesi begin with its delta. The bar here was long held to be impassable, except to vessels of the shallowest draught, but the difficulty was exaggerated partly through ignorance and partly in the interests of the Portuguese settlement of Quilimane, which, before the merits of the Kongone entrance were understood, had been already established on the Qua-qua River, sixty miles to the north. The Zambesi is now known to have four mouths, the Milambe to the west, the Kongone, the Leeabo, and the Timbwe. The best of these, the Kongone, has altered and the channel improved recently. There are at least eighteen feet of water on the bar at high water neap tides; and steamers drawing fifteen feet, and sailing vessels drawing three feet less, have no difficulty in entering. The deep water continues only a short distance, and, after Mazaro (sixty miles) is reached, where the river has already dwindled to the breadth of a mile, the channel is open in the dry season as far as Senna (120 miles from the mouth) for vessels drawing four and one-half feet. Up to this point navigation could only be successfully and continuously carried on by vessels of much lighter draught--stern-wheelers for preference with a draught of little more than eighteen inches. About ninety miles from Senna the river enters the Lupata gorge, the impetuous current contracting between walls to a width of scarcely 200 yards. Passing Tete (240 miles from the mouth with a smooth course) the channel becomes dangerous at Kebrabassa, ninety miles further on. From the Kebrabassa rapids upwards, and past the Victoria Falls, there are occasional stretches of navigable water extending for considerable distances, while the upper Zambesi with its confluents and their tributaries forms a really fine and extensive waterway. Like the Nile, the Zambesi is visited by annual inundations, during which the whole country is flooded and many of the minor falls and rapids are then obliterated.
The chief physical feature of the Zambesi is the Mosi-oa-tunya (“smoke sounds there”) or Victoria Falls, admitted to be one of the noblest waterfalls in the world. The cataract is bounded on three sides by ridges 300 or 400 feet high, and these, along with many islands dotted over the stream, are covered with sylvan vegetation. The falls, according to Livingstone, are caused by a stupendous crack or rent, with sharp and almost unbroken edges, stretching right across the river in the hard black basalt which here forms the bed. The cleft is 360 feet in sheer depth and close upon a mile in length. Into this chasm, or more than twice the depth of Niagara, the river rolls with a deafening roar, sending up vast columns of spray, which are visible for a distance of twenty miles. Unlike Niagara, the Mosi-oa-tunya does not terminate in an open gorge, the river immediately below the fall being blocked at eighty yards by the opposing side of the (supposed) cleft running parallel to the precipice which forms the waterfall. The only outlet is a narrow channel cut in this barrier at a point 1,170 yards from the western end of the chasm and some 600 from its eastern, and through this the Zambesi, now only twenty or thirty yards wide, pours for 120 yards before emerging into the enormous zigzag trough which conducts the river past the basalt plateau.
The region drained by the Zambesi may be represented as a vast broken-edged plateau 3,000 or 4,000 feet high, composed in the remote interior of metamorphic beds and fringed with the igneous rocks of the Victoria Falls. At Shupanga, on the lower Zambesi, thin strata of grey and yellow sandstone, with an occasional band of limestone, crop out on the bed of the river in the dry season, and these persist beyond Tete, where they are associated with extensive seams of coal. Gold is also known to occur in several places.
The higher regions of the Zambesi have only been visited by one or two explorers; and the lower, though nominally in possession of the Portuguese since the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, are also comparatively little known. The Barotse valley, or valley of the upper Zambesi, is a vast pastoral plain, 3,300 feet above sea-level, about 189 miles in length and thirty to thirty-five broad. Though inundated in the rainy season, it is covered with villages and supports countless herds of cattle. The Luiwas who inhabit it are clothed with skins, work neatly in ivory, and live upon milk, maize, and sweet potatoes. In the neighbourhood of the falls the tsetse fly abounds; and the Batoka people who live there, and who are the only arboriculturists in the country, live upon the products of their gardens. Zumbo, on the north bank, and Chicova, opposite on the southern side (500 miles above the delta), were the farthest inland of the Portuguese East African settlements, and are well placed for commerce with the natives. Founded by Pereira, a native of Goa, these settlements were ultimately allowed to go to ruins; but Zumbo has been recently reoccupied. The once celebrated gold mines of Parda Pemba are in the vicinity. The only other Portuguese settlements on the Zambesi are Tete and Senna. Tete, formerly a large and important place, now nearly in ruins, still possesses a fort and several good tiled stone and mud houses. Thither Portuguese goods, chiefly wines and provisions, are carried by means of canoes. The exports, which include ivory, gold dust, wheat, and ground-nuts, are limited owing to the difficulty of transport; but this difficulty is not insurmountable, for Tete has been twice visited by some small steam vessels. Senna, further down the river, a neglected and unhealthy village, has suffered much from political mismanagement, and has ceaseless troubles with the Landeens or Zulus, who own the southern bank of the river, and collect in force every year to exact a heavy tribute-money. The industrial possibilities of the lower Zambesi, and indeed of the whole river system, are enormous. India-rubber, indigo, archil, beeswax, and columbo root are plentiful, and oil-seeds and sugar-cane could be produced in sufficient quantity to supply the whole of Europe.
The Zambesi region was known to the mediæval geographers as the empire of Monomotapa, and the course of the river, as well as the position of Lakes N’gami and Nyassa, was filled in with a rude approximation to accuracy in the earlier maps. These were probably constructed from Arab information. The first European to visit the upper Zambesi was Livingstone in his exploration from Bechuanaland between 1851 and 1853. Two or three years later he descended the Zambesi to its mouth and in the course of this journey discovered the Victoria Falls. In 1859, accompanied by Dr. Kirk (now Sir John Kirk), Livingstone ascended the river as far as the falls, after tracing the course of its main tributary, the Shiré, and discovering Lake Nyassa. The mouths of the Zambesi were long claimed exclusively by the Portuguese, but in 1888 the British Government opened negotiations with Portugal to have the river declared free to all nations.
THE URUGUAY
ERNEST WILLIAM WHITE
The River Uruguay, a health-giving stream impregnated with sarsaparilla, and the lesser of the two affluents which swell into the mighty La Plata, possesses charms for the traveller, denied to the greater, the Paraná, at least in the lower part of its course; the water is clearer, the range not so vast, the scenery more varied and picturesque, whilst the traces of industry are more patent and the difficulties and dangers of its navigation add a piquancy unknown to the sister waters.
As its shores were to me as yet an unknown region, I determined to spend a fortnight in becoming familiar with their beauties, so on the morning of the 25th of December, in the midst of a glorious summer season, a friend joined me in taking return tickets from Buenos Ayres to Concordia, Entre Rios, which at the then state of the tide, was the furthest point upwards that a steamer could reach.
During breakfast we pretty well lose sight of the Argentine coast and have nothing before us but a broad freshwater ocean covered with innumerable blue-flowered camelotes, consisting chiefly of _Pontederia_, which spread their broad leaves as sails to speed them on their course; these nesine fragments descend the Paraná but are unknown on the bosom of the Uruguay. On our right side soon rises a long low ridge of sand indicating the Banda Oriental coast, terminating opposite the island of Martin Garcia, in cliffs resembling those of loved Albion. Calm as the Thames at London bridge is all this mighty estuary; it is not always so however, but on this holy day of peace
“The winds with wonder whist Smoothly the waters kissed!”
And it is only by sailing over it in the glare of daylight that any adequate impression of its vastness can be obtained. Whence comes all this overflowing tide? is a question readily answered by the rigid scientist, but with whose conclusions, the imagination rests not satisfied.
After leaving the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, but little shipping is met with, and the reflection immediately occurs, how different the case would be, were this magnificent water-highway in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race. On finding ourselves nearly abreast of Martin Garcia, the Argentine coast magically arose under a strong mirage, the trees appearing suspended in the air and completely separated from the shore line; whilst a shoal several miles in extent threatening our port bow, indicated the necessity of hugging the island, if we would avoid the fate of a fine bark which lay rotting only a few yards off.
The navigation is extremely perilous especially at low water and yet but a few buoys are visible, an unaccount-able omission, at least in times of peace. A boat containing the _comandante_ sallies from the fort and we, in common with all other passing vessels, are obliged to lie to, in order to await its visit.
Martin Garcia, at once the Norfolk island and Gibraltar of the River Plate, is the key of the common entrance to both the Paraná and Uruguay, as their bifurcation occurs farther north; and the channel, whose character may be surmised from its name “_Hell channel_,” passes within easy reach of the guns of this sentinel of the rivers, which has been strongly fortified by the Argentine government. A barren looking granitic tract, whence are quarried the _adoquines_ (paving stones) for the streets of the metropolis, with low sandy shores, rising in the interior to the height of two hundred feet and bristling with permanent fortifications and earthworks, it presents a standing menace to dispute with intruders entrance by water into the heart of the republic. On entering the River Uruguay, which has an embouchure of about thirteen miles, both banks are visible and very striking differences they present; the right or Entre-Riano shore is well-wooded and clothed with vegetation, whilst the left or Montevidean lies in all its naked barrenness. Further on, the Banda Oriental coast alters its character, being fringed with islands and less sandy; then jut out into the river a succession of bold bluffs, almost all with a bloody history, covered with a scanty verdure emerging from sand, presenting a close general resemblance to the southern shore of the Isle of Wight; and these promontories are usually dotted with _estancias_. Casting our eyes across the broad waters, we notice a change there likewise; long reefs of sand exchange verdure for sterility, and it is a remarkable circumstance throughout our whole progress up the Uruguay, that the two shores bear continually opposite or, so to speak, complimentary characters, not only physically and politically but botanically; when one is bold or fertile, the other is low or sterile. We now pass several wrecks, attesting the difficulties which beset our watery path.
Rounding a point, we suddenly come upon what looks uncommonly like an English fishing-village, with its craft quietly reposing in a snug bay; the church and cemetery topping our eminence, whilst the residence of the lord of the manor caps another, and learn that this is _Nueva Palmira_. The Oriental flag here boards us for the first time and the Easterns got rid of, the Saturno is again let loose on her orbit to hug the Montevidean coast, which now descends again to long reaches of low flat sands, with a broader stream, forming extensive sabulous, and in some cases well-wooded islands, which stretch leagues upon leagues along this left bank. A glorious moon, within two days of the full, succeeded one of the angriest yet finest of sunsets, and her rays, falling full upon the capacious bosom of the placid river transformed it into a lake of burnished silver. At about 9 P. M. we arrive off the mouth of the Rio Negro (Black River), called thus because the decaying sarsaparilla roots, with which its banks are lined, impregnate and discolour the waters and at the same time render them so highly medicinal as to attract great numbers of bathers to its shores.
As the rising sun’s disk was cut in twain by the horizon, I started upon deck to view the landscape. We were coursing through numberless islands, with a scenery on both banks exactly like that of the Suffolk river Orwell, but with an atmosphere O! how different! ours was as the balm of Eden, theirs, the nipping dry Eoic. The breadth of the stream is here about half a mile, and the moderately elevated banks are clothed with vivid green to the water’s edge; then as the river narrows again, we traverse a beautiful Ægean, whose innumerable islets are thickly wooded, principally with Espinillo (_Acacia cavenia_), Tala (_Celtis Sellowiana_), the willow of Humboldt, Ceibo (_Erythrina cristagalli_) and Laurel; but which, to my utter astonishment, presented scarcely any trace of animal life; hardly a dozen butterflies, a chimango or two, and a few weary-looking butcher-birds were its sole visible representatives. About 6 A. M., whilst passing through low jungle we sight our first city on the Argentine side, Concepcion del Uruguay, the capital of the province of Entre Rios; and entering a deep channel scarce a hundred yards broad, flanked by a double row of poplars, emerge in front of the splendid _Saladero_[4] of Santa Candida.
[Footnote 4: Slaughter-house.]
Ten miles above Paysandú, the river expands into a broad belt clear as a mirror, in which the sky, distant foliage and hills are brilliantly reflected, the air changes and bathed in tropical fragrance and balminess, the intensely vivid verdure springs up magically around us.
At the junction of the Queguay, an oriental affluent with the main stream, which at this point has a breadth of about half a mile are planted several _Saladeros_, apparently hard at work; but whether the palms are scared by the scent of blood or refuse to witness the daily holocaust, certain it is that they here suddenly vanish from the scene. Twenty miles above this rises a veritable _Tarpeia_ in the shape of a very lofty, bold, perpendicular-faced mass jutting into the river from the Uruguay coast, and which, with a refinement of cruelty and a just appreciation of history, was actually used by a general in one of the periodic revolutions to which this unhappy country is so subject, wherefrom to hurl his prisoners. Two picturesque islands, circular, rising abruptly out of the water, apparently exactly equal in size and shape, and hence styled “_Las dos hermanas_” (the two sisters), stand as advanced guards to this precipitous promontory, and by their intensely green verdure to the river’s edge and smooth mathematical uniformity, offer a pleasing contrast to the rugged, battered and blackened face of the cliff.
We hold our breath as with a quick turn and dart through the seething flood, our clever steersman pilots us through dangers greater than ever Sylla and Charybdis offered, and leaves us at leisure to survey the prosperous cattle farms, which, on both banks, now line our approach to Concordia.
At length about 5 P. M., after a passage of thirty-one hours and at a distance of 300 miles from Buenos Ayres, we sight the town of Concordia on the right bank, and at almost the same moment Salto, on the left, which, rising tier upon tier, very much resembles Bath; these two occupy almost the same relative positions as Buda and Pesth on the Danube.
From its junction with the Paraná, the Uruguay is navigable at all states of the tide as far as Concordia, but some miles above that city occur the Falls of Salto-grande and numerous rapids which render it unnavigable to steamers from below, except in times of extraordinary freshets between which an interval of years sometimes elapses; whilst above these, although still sown with rapids, the river is navigable but to vessels of smaller draught.
From the marvellous accounts I had listened to, I expected to behold in these Falls another Niagara, but great was my disappointment on viewing them for the first time, for although very picturesque, they struck me as completely wanting in the grandeur with which my imagination had clothed them. Extending for about a mile longitudinally, they consist on the northern limit of a transverse bar of boulders which cause a perpendicular descent of about twenty-five feet; then a succession of rugged rocks, sometimes of very fantastic shape, pile Pelion on Ossa, amongst which the river surges and eddies. The reef spreads completely across the river, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, so that in some states of the tide, it is possible to pass on foot from Entre Rios to the Banda Oriental, at all times a difficult, nay dangerous, undertaking. An island formed of massive boulders occupies the centre, on which a few dwarfed trees struggle for an aquatic existence. Here are found splendid agates, blocks of rock crystal, amethysts and other precious stones; and there lie naked on the blistering rocks, those rusty and silent mementos of Garibaldi’s unsuccessful expedition in 1840 when, to cross the rapids, he was obliged to throw overboard ten eighteen-pounder iron guns.
By contemplating the scene, however, it grows in magnitude and sublimity.
THE TWEED
SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER