The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water supply from twenty-eight States and Territories from Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on the Pacific slope-a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames. It discharges three times as much water as the St. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world-four thousand three hundred miles. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. The Mississippi is well worth reading about. Enjoy contrasting some excerpts of Twain’s observations with the preceding story about kayaking the river today.įrom Chapter 1, The River and Its History

Twain had planned the book that became Life on the Mississippi for nearly two decades before it was published in 1883.

He once said he knew stretches of the mighty river as well as he knew the hallway of his own house in the dark. Clemens) became intimate with the Mississippi River while working on steamboats for about five years, first as a “cub” or apprentice, and later as a pilot until the Civil War broke out.

Mark twain mississippi