Beyond the Mississippi

1857, I left St. Louis, whirling westward by the Pacific Railroad of Missouri. It was begun in 1850 when there were but seven thousand miles of railway on the American continent. Now there are thirty-seven thousand miles.

Slavery had greatly retarded this richest State of our whole Union. Illinois, building the longest railway in the world and reaching every hamlet with the locomotive, was far in advance of her. Chicago, stretching out iron arms in every direction, was fast gaining upon St. Louis. But Missouri already felt the free atmosphere of her great metropolis and the surrounding States. She had plunged heavily in debt to inaugurate a generous railway system, guaranteeing bonds of the companies to the amount of many millions of dollars. Several of these roads, in default of payment, were afterward forfeited to the Commonwealth, and sold

AMERICAN WINES OF THE WEST. [1857.

to new corporations at a heavy loss. But they developed the unequaled resources of Missouri, and were the entering wedge-the first deadly blow at her relic of barbarism.

We looked up at tall fantastic turrets crowning high limestone walls, and down into deep valleys of luxuriant oaks, elms, maples, black-walnuts, sycamores, and cottonwoods, with network of parasitic vines. In August the landscape is black with enormous clusters of elder-berries from which skillful housewives make a pleasant, domestic wine. Now, among dead, ghostly, standing trunks of girdled trees, thriving corn and tobacco concealed the rich, jet-black soil. Autumn corn-stalks often rise high above the log farm-houses, and completely hide them,—

'A mighty maize, but not without a plan.'

At the few very modern villages, we heard native depotmasters report 'Right smart o' sickness down the crick,' and little darkies warn each other, 'Get out of the way, the train has done started.'

Hermann, a German settlement upon our route, was then producing more native wine than any other point west of Ohio. Now, California far exceeds it. Wherever the sharp bluffs of Missouri slope to the southward, they are specially adapted to vine-growing; and the State is believed to embrace ten million acres upon which the grape will thrive-double the area of all the vineyards of France. The capacity of the Ohio valley also, is practically illimitable. Already the mellow lines of Longfellow are not merely the poet's fancy, but literal truth,—

'For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River.'

The next generation will see the choicest wines of the world made in California, Ohio and Missouri. They will be exported to every foreign land. Americans will give them to their children, and use them freely in their households as our farmers do milk, or the Germans their Rhenish wines. Men will have stimulants. No nation, civilized or savage ever existed without them. And

1857.]

THE GREAT MUDDY RIVER.

wherever our native wines are introduced they diminish the con sumption of whisky and brandy, and promote health and temperance. They who drink beer think beer,' but Catawba and Muscatel neither muddle the brain nor fire the passions.

Our train dashed up and down heavy grades, darted around curves and shot through tunnels, to the tune of Festus:

'By Chaos! this is gallant sport

A league at every breath;
Methinks if I ever have to die,

I'll ride this rate to death.'

The locomotive seemed rolling straight to the Pacific; but the fullness of time was not yet come, and it made a weary halt at Jefferson, one hundred and twenty-five miles west of the Mississippi. In the crowded intervening years, the iron horse has taken many a long leap, over prairie, across desert, and through canyon, until now he snuffs the salt air of the western ocean.

At Jefferson-dreariest and dismalest of State capitals-I took steamer up the great yellow river of the Massorites,' as La Hontan named it two centuries ago. Later travelers called it 'the Messourie.' It is still dense as then with the crumbling prairies which it cuts away to deposit along the lower Mississippi, or add to the new land at its mouth, rising from the gulf, as rose the primeval earth from the face of the deep.

John Randolph exaggerated in declaring that the Ohio was frozen over one-half the year and dry the other half. But Benton told almost the exact truth when he described the Missouri as a little too thick to swim in, and not quite thick enough to walk on. By daylight the broad current is unpoetic and repulsivea stream of liquid brick-dust or flowing mud, studded with dead tree-trunks, broken by bars and islands of dreary sand, and inclosed by crumbling shores of naked soil. Its water will deposit a sediment an eighth of an inch thick upon the bottom of a tumbler in five minutes. Though at first unpalatable and medicinal, one soon finds it a pleasant, healthful beverage. I have seen errant Missourians so partial to it, as to urge that the pure waters of the Rocky Mountains were unfit to drink because of their clearness!

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Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean : Life and ...