There Are No High Mountains; But High Mountains
Themselves Are Grand Rather Than Beautiful.
There are no high
mountains; but there is a succession of hills, which group
themselves forever without monotony.
It is, perhaps, the ever-
variegated forms of these bluffs which chiefly constitute the
wonderful loveliness of this river. The idea constantly occurs
that some point on every hillside would form the most charming site
ever yet chosen for a noble residence. I have passed up and down
rivers clothed to the edge with continuous forest. This at first
is grand enough, but the eye and feeling soon become weary. Here
the trees are scattered so that the eye passes through them, and
ever and again a long lawn sweeps back into the country and up the
steep side of a hill, making the traveler long to stay there and
linger through the oaks, and climb the bluffs, and lay about on the
bold but easy summits. The boat, however, steams quickly up
against the current, and the happy valleys are left behind one
quickly after another. The river is very various in its breadth,
and is constantly divided by islands. It is never so broad that
the beauty of the banks is lost in the distance or injured by it.
It is rapid, but has not the beautifully bright color of some
European rivers - of the Rhine, for instance, and the Rhone. But
what is wanting in the color of the water is more than compensated
by the wonderful hues and luster of the shores. We visited the
river in October, and I must presume that they who seek it solely
for the sake of scenery should go there in that month. It was not
only that the foliage of the trees was bright with every imaginable
color, but that the grass was bronzed and that the rocks were
golden. And this beauty did not last only for awhile, and then
cease. On the Rhine there are lovely spots and special morsels of
scenery with which the traveler becomes duly enraptured. But on
the Upper Mississippi there are no special morsels. The position
of the sun in the heavens will, as it always does, make much
difference in the degree of beauty. The hour before and the half
hour after sunset are always the loveliest for such scenes. But of
the shores themselves one may declare that they are lovely
throughout those four hundred miles which run immediately south
from St. Paul.
About half way between La Crosse and St. Paul we came upon Lake
Pepin, and continued our course up the lake for perhaps fifty or
sixty miles. This expanse of water is narrow for a lake, and, by
those who know the lower courses of great rivers, would hardly be
dignified by that name. But, nevertheless, the breadth here
lessens the beauty. There are the same bluffs, the same scattered
woodlands, and the same colors. But they are either at a distance,
or else they are to be seen on one side only. The more that I see
of the beauty of scenery, and the more I consider its elements, the
stronger becomes my conviction that size has but little to do with
it, and rather detracts from it than adds to it. Distance gives
one of its greatest charms, but it does so by concealing rather
than displaying an expanse of surface. The beauty of distance
arises from the romance, the feeling of mystery which it creates.
It is like the beauty of woman, which allures the more the more
that it is vailed. But open, uncovered land and water, mountains
which simply rise to great heights, with long, unbroken slopes,
wide expanses of lake, and forests which are monotonous in their
continued thickness, are never lovely to me. A landscape should
always be partly vailed, and display only half its charms.
To my taste the finest stretch of the river was that immediately
above Lake Pepin; but then, at this point, we had all the glory of
the setting sun. It was like fairy-land, so bright were the golden
hues, so fantastic were the shapes of the hills, so broken and
twisted the course of the waters! But the noisy steamer went
groaning up the narrow passages with almost unabated speed, and
left the fairy land behind all too quickly. Then the bell would
ring for tea, and the children with the beef-steaks, the pickled
onions, and the light fixings would all come over again. The care-
laden mothers would tuck the bibs under the chins of their tyrant
children, and some embryo senator of four years old would listen
with concentrated attention while the negro servant recapitulated
to him the delicacies of the supper-table, in order that he might
make his choice with due consideration. "Beef-steak," the embryo
four-year old senator would lisp, "and stewed potato, and buttered
toast, and corn-cake, and coffee, - and - and - and - mother, mind you
get me the pickles."
St. Paul enjoys the double privilege of being the commercial and
political capital of Minnesota. The same is the case with Boston,
in Massachusetts, but I do not remember another instance in which
it is so. It is built on the eastern bank of the Mississippi,
though the bulk of the State lies to the west of the river. It is
noticeable as the spot up to which the river is navigable.
Immediately above St. Paul there are narrow rapids up which no boat
can pass. North of this continuous navigation does not go; but
from St. Paul down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico it is
uninterrupted. The distance to St. Louis in Missouri, a town built
below the confluence of the three rivers, Mississippi, Missouri,
and Illinois, is 900 miles and then the navigable waters down to
the Gulf wash a southern country of still greater extent. No river
on the face of the globe forms a highway for the produce of so wide
an extent of agricultural land.
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