The Father of Waters -- Its Drainage Area -- The Big Muddy -- Sources of the Missouri -- The Great Falls -- Fort Benton -- Sioux City -- Council Bluffs -- Omaha -- St. Joseph -- Atchison -- Leavenworth -- Lawrence -- Topeka -- Osowatomie -- John Brown -- Kansas Emigrants -- The Walls of Corn -- Kansas City -- Wyandotte -- Chillicothe -- Florida -- Mark Twain -- Muscatine -- Burlington -- Nauvoo -- Keokuk -- Des Moines -- St. Louis -- Jefferson Barracks -- Egypt -- Belmont -- Columbus -- Island No. 10 -- Fort Pillow -- The Chickasaws -- Memphis -- Mississippi River Peculiarities -- Its Deposits and Cut-Offs -- The Alluvial Bottom Lands -- St. Francis Basin -- Helena -- White River -- Arkansas River -- Fort Smith -- Little Rock -- Arkansas Hot Springs -- Washita River -- Napoleon -- Yazoo Basin -- Vicksburg -- Natchez Indians -- Natchez -- Red River -- Texarkana -- Shreveport -- Red River Rafts -- Atchafalaya River -- Baton Rouge -- Biloxi -- Beauvoir -- Pass Christian -- New Orleans -- Battle of New Orleans -- Lake Pontchartrain -- The Mississippi Levees -- Crevasses -- The Delta and Passes -- The Balize -- The Forts -- South Pass -- Eads Jetties -- Gulf of Mexico. THE BIG MUDDY. The great "Father of Waters," with its many tributaries, drains a territory of a million and a half square miles, in which live almost one-half the population of the United States. The length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico is about twenty-six hundred miles, the actual distance in a direct line being but sixteen hundred and sixty miles. Its name comes from the Ojibway words _Misi Sepe_, meaning the "great river, flowing everywhere," and the early explorers spelled it "Mesasippi." The Iroquois called it the Kahnahweyokah, having much the same meaning. The upper waters of the Mississippi have already been described in a preceding chapter, and taken in connection with its chief tributary, the Missouri, it is one of the longest rivers in the world, the distance from the source to the Gulf being almost forty-two hundred miles. The Dakotas called this stream _Minni-shosha_, or the "muddy water," and its popular name throughout the Northwest, from the turbid current it carries, has come to be the "Big Muddy." The head streams rise in Idaho, the _Eda Hoe_ of the Nez Perces, meaning the "Light on the Mountains," and in Wyoming. The name of the Indian nation through whose lands its upper waters flow--the Dakotahs--means the "Confederate People," indicating a league of various tribes. The Mississippi drains practically the whole country between the Appalachian Mountains on the east and the "Continental Divide" of the Rockies on the west.