MY floating home was now upon the broad Mississippi, which text-book geographers still insist upon calling "the Father of Waters--the largest river in North America." Its current was about one-third faster than that of its tributary, the Ohio. Its banks were covered with heavy forests, and for miles along its course the great wilderness was broken only by the half-tilled lands of the cotton- planter. From Cairo southward the river is very tortuous, turning back upon itself as if imitating the convolutions of a crawling serpent, and following a channel of more than eleven hundred and fifty miles before its waters unite with those of the Gulf of Mexico. This country between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico is truly the delta of the Mississippi, for the river north of Cairo cuts through table-lands, and is confined to its old bed; but below the mouth of the Ohio the great river persistently seeks for new channels, and, as we approach New Orleans, we discover branches which carry off a considerable portion of its water to the Gulf coast in southwestern Louisiana. It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for the study of physical geography has not been developed among my countrymen. Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported chair of physical geography occupied by an American? We sometimes hear of a "Professor of Geology and Physical Geography," but the last is only a sort of appendage--a tail--to the former. When a student of American geography begins the study in earnest, he discovers that our geographies are insufficient, are filled with errors, and that our maps possess a greater number of inaccuracies than truths. When he goes into the field to study the physical geography of his native land, he is forced to go through the disagreeable process of unlearning all he has been taught from the poor textbooks of stay-at- home travellers and closet students, whose compilations have burdened his mind with errors. In despair he turns to the topographical charts and maps of the "United States Coast and Geodetic Survey," and of the "Engineer Corps of the United States Army," and in the truthful and interesting results of the practical labors of trained observers he takes courage as he enters anew his field of study. The cartographer of the shop economically constructs his unreliable maps to supply a cheap demand; and strange to say, though the results of the government surveys are freely at his disposal, he rarely makes use of them. It costs too much to alter the old map-plates, and but few persons will feel sufficiently interested to criticise the faults of his latest edition.