The Argus

ITS UNKNOWN BEAUTY.
The Mississippi River Scenery has not been Justly Advertized.

Those who travel northward on the river steamers have noticed that with very few exceptions the passengers are residents of towns along or contiguous to the river. Seldom are foreigners or eastern tourists among them. This is because the beauties of the upper Mississippi are not generally known. Mark Twain, who was on the War Eagle on her last trip from St. Paul to Keokuk where the humorist's mother resides, says of it:

"Neither in this country nor in any other have I seen such interesting scenery as that along the upper Mississippi. One finds all that the Hudson affords--bluffs and wooded highlands--and a great deal in addition. Between St. Paul and the mouth of the Illinois river there are over 400 islands, strung out in every possible shape. A river without islands is like a woman without hair. She may be good and pure, but one doesn't fall in love with her very often."

There is no place for loafing more satisfactory than the pilot house of the Mississippi steamboat. It amuses the children to see the pilot monkey with the wheel. Traveling by boat is the best way to travel, unless one can stay at home. On a lake or river boat one is as thoroughly cut off from letters and papers and the tax collector as though he were amid sea. Moreover, one doesn't have the discomforts of seafaring. It is very unpleasant to look at seasick people--at least so my friends said the last time I crossed.

"It is strange how little has been written about the Upper Mississippi. The river below St. Louis has been described time and again, and it is the least interesting part. One can sit in the pilot house for a few hours and watch the low shores, the ungainly trees, and the democratic buzzards, and then one might as well go to bed. One has seen all there is to see. Along the Upper Mississippi every hour brings something new. There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages--everything one could desire. Few people ever think of going there however. Dickens, Corbett, Mother Trollope, and other discriminating English people who 'wrote up' the country before 1842, had hardly an idea that such a stretch of river scenery existed. Their successors have followed in their footsteps, and as we form our opinions of our country from what other people say of us, of course we ignore the finest part of the Mississippi."