Republican Herald

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.—It is mentioned in the Encyclopaedia, as a characteristic of the Mississippi belonging to very few of the long and large rivers, that it rises in very cold regions, and runs towards the equator. By thus flowing through almost every variety of climate, it is the channel of conveyance to a corresponding variety of products, and must thus become the scene of the most active internal commerce on the globe, in which the products of the extreme north will be exchanged against those of the almost tropical regions in which it disembogues.

"If," says the article quoted, "we except the Amazon, probably no other valley on the globe will compare in size with that of the Mississippi; and it probably surpasses all others in the richness and variety of its soil, and its general adaptation to the support and comfort of civilized men. In extent, it is like a continent, in beauty and fertility, it is the most perfect garden of nature." It embraces twenty degrees of latitude, and thirty of longitude, which we may observe to be equal to the distance between Gibraltar and Edinburgh, and to that which, in the same latitudes, in Europe, comprehends Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and the Mediterranean inclosed between them and the western coasts of Greece. From Oleanne Point on the Alleghany, to the highest point of boat navigation on the Missouri, is 5,000 miles, by water, of course. What a picture is this of magnitude and prospective wealth. But how is the conception of it enlarged by the reflection, it is the demesne of a people whose institutions give the greatest spur to industry, and make life in such a region best worth having!