“‘The Mississippi is turbid, in many parts to muddiness; the St. Lawrence unusually limpid. One river is composed of almost an unbroken chain of lakes; the other, in all its vast expanse, has no lakes that strictly deserve the name. Annually the Mississippi overleaps its bed, and overwhelms the adjacent shores to a great extent; an accidental rise of three feet, in the course of fifty years, is considered an extraordinary swell of the waters of St. Lawrence; this circumstance has occurred the present season for the first time within the lapse of forty years past. The Mississippi, flowing from north to south, passes through innumerable climes; whilst its rival, winding from its source, in a south-east direction, to near north latitude 41°, turns gradually north-east, and again flows into its original climate of ice and snow. The Mississippi, before its final discharge into the Gulf of Mexico, divides into a number of branches, having their separate egress; the St. Lawrence imperceptibly expands to a wide bay, which finally opens into the gulf of the same name. The banks of the Mississippi present a level, scarce rising above the superior surface of that stream; those of St. Lawrence, by a gentle acclivity, exhibit the opposing sides of an elegant basin. Much of the surface watered by the Mississippi is a region of grass, where few shrubs or trees rise to break the monotony of the face of the earth; the shores that bound the St. Lawrence, when in a state of nature, are covered with an almost continuous and impervious forest. And, lastly, though rather an accidental than a natural distinction, the Mississippi rolls its mighty volume, swelled by more than a thousand rivers, through one empire; and is, as I once before observed, the largest stream on this globe, whose entire course lies within one sovereignty. The St. Lawrence is, for more than 1,300 miles, a national limit, and, as such, marked with the sanguinary points which distinguish the bounds of rival power.’