turesque view. For a distance of six miles the rocks rise perpendicularly from the bed of the river to the height of 1,200 feet. Here and there in crevices are bunches of verdure, firs, cedars and lone pine trees, watered by an infinite number of springs, which channel the sides of the rock. Here the river is compressed within a bed 150 yards wide; and only one place, a few feet square, is visible where a man might stand between the cliff and the water. From the entry of the Rocky Mountains to the Great Falls is IIo miles; to the junction with the Mississippi it is 2,685 miles.
The Great Falls of the Missouri are not as sublime as those of the Niagara, but they may hold second place for grandeur among all the waterfalls of this vast continent. In a distance of sixteen and a half miles the river descends 357 feet by a succession of rapids and falls. The greatest fall has a perpendicular height of eighty-seven feet, the second is nineteen, the third forty-seven and the fourth twentysix; a succession of rapids and cascades of from three to eighteen feet fill the distance from one to another. The upper course of the river to the mouth of the Yellowstone [Marias] lies toward the north.
The Yellowstone, which has a mouth 8oo yards in width, and which at that point seems as large as the main river, is probably the greatest of the tributaries of the Missouri. It comes in from the southwest, 1,216 [about 750] miles from its source and 1,880 miles from its junction with the Mississippi. Steamboats come thus far up and could go higher in both branches.
The length of the Missouri river from its source to its mouth is therefore 3,096 miles; add 1,353 miles from its mouth to the Gulf of Mexico and you have a total of 4,449 miles. It is without doubt the longest river of the globe. From the gulf to the Great Falls there is no insurmountable obstacle to its navigation. Its principal tributaries are navigable for distances of loo to 8oo miles. The alluvial soil along this river and its tributaries is fertile, but narrow and subject to occasional overflows. Leaving these