No More Learning

Humboldt, speaking of the Orinoco, says that this name
is unknown in the interior of the country; so likewise the tribes that
dwell about the sources of the St. Lawrence have never heard the name
which it bears in the lower part of its course. It rises near another
father of waters,--the Mississippi,--issuing from a remarkable spring
far up in the woods, called Lake Superior, fifteen hundred miles in
circumference; and several other springs there are thereabouts which
feed it. It makes such a noise in its tumbling down at one place as is
heard all round the world. Bouchette, the Surveyor-General of the
Canadas, calls it "the most splendid river on the globe;" says that it
is two thousand statute miles long (more recent geographers make it
four or five hundred miles longer); that at the Riviere du Sud it is
eleven miles wide; at the Traverse, thirteen; at the Paps of Matane,
twenty-five; at the Seven Islands, seventy-three; and at its mouth,
from Cape Rosier to the Mingan Settlements in Labrador, near one
hundred and five (? ) miles wide. According to Captain Bayfield's
recent chart it is about _ninety-six_ geographical miles wide at the
latter place, measuring at right angles with the stream. It has much
the largest estuary, regarding both length and breadth, of any river
on the globe. Humboldt says that the River Plate, which has the
broadest estuary of the South American rivers, is ninety-two
geographical miles wide at its mouth; also he found the Orinoco to be
more than three miles wide at five hundred and sixty miles from its
mouth; but he does not tell us that ships of six hundred tons can sail
up it so far, as they can up the St. Lawrence to Montreal,--an equal
distance. If he had described a fleet of such ships at anchor in a
city's port so far inland, we should have got a very different idea of
the Orinoco. Perhaps Charlevoix describes the St. Lawrence truly as
the most _navigable_ river in the world. Between Montreal and Quebec
it averages about two miles wide. The tide is felt as far up as Three
Rivers, four hundred and thirty-two miles, which is as far as from
Boston to Washington.
As far up as Cap aux Oyes, sixty or seventy
miles below Quebec, Kalm found a great part of the plants near the
shore to be marine, as glasswort (_Salicornia_), seaside pease (_Pisum
maritimum_), sea-milkwort (_Glaux_), beach-grass (_Psamma arenaria_),
seaside plantain (_Plantago maritima_), the sea-rocket (_Bunias
cakile_), etc.

The geographer Guyot observes that the Maranon is three thousand miles
long, and gathers its waters from a surface of a million and a half
square miles; that the Mississippi is also three thousand miles long,
but its basin covers only from eight to nine hundred thousand square
miles; that the St. Lawrence is eighteen hundred miles long, and its
basin covers more than a million square miles (Darby says five hundred
thousand); and speaking of the lakes, he adds, "These vast fresh-water
seas, together with the St. Lawrence, cover a surface of nearly one
hundred thousand square miles, and it has been calculated that they
contain about one half of all the fresh water on the surface of our
planet. " But all these calculations are necessarily very rude and
inaccurate. Its tributaries, the Ottawa, St. Maurice, and Saguenay,
are great rivers themselves. The latter is said to be more than one
thousand (? ) feet deep at its mouth, while its cliffs rise
perpendicularly an equal distance above its surface. Pilots say there
are no soundings till one hundred and fifty miles up the St. Lawrence.
The greatest sounding in the river, given on Bayfield's chart of the
gulf and river, is two hundred and twenty-eight fathoms. McTaggart, an
engineer, observes that "the Ottawa is larger than all the rivers in
Great Britain, were they running in one. " The traveler Grey writes: "A
dozen Danubes, Rhines, Taguses, and Thameses would be nothing to
twenty miles of fresh water in breadth [as where he happened to be],
from ten to forty fathoms in depth. " And again: "There is not perhaps
in the whole extent of this immense continent so fine an approach to
it as by the river St. Lawrence.