Latter Day Saints; United States -- Description and travel
Fevre River, at Galena, runs through a narrow vale, and is hedged in on
either side by ranges of hills. The town is built at the base and on the
side of the western ridge, which is here quite precipitous. The valley
itself is overflown with every rise of the Mississippi above this point.
The waters of the Fevre River between Galena and its junction with the
"Father of rivers" are very sluggish--so that the waters of the Mississippi
flow up to Galena often three or four times a year, and flood the whole
lower part of the town. Since I have been here the third rise which they
have had this season occurred, occasioned as it was supposed by the melting
of the snows and ice around the sources of the most northern tributaries of
the Mississippi. One thing is very remarkable in relation to the whole
class of western tributaries to this stream. The freshets to which they are
subject, all occur at different seasons, beginning with the southernmost
and ending with the most northerly. This is accounted for by the fact,
that, as these streams take their rise at different points of latitude in
the Rocky Mountains, spring and summer reach the source of each of them in
regular progression from south to north, by a few weeks later. This is a
most merciful provision: for if the freshets in two or three of these
streams were to happen at the same time, the effects would be desolating.
Let the Red River, the Arkansas, and the Missouri, pour their swollen
streams at the time of their annual freshets, together into the
Mississippi, and the whole lower regions for hundreds of miles above and
around New Orleans would be one unbroken sea. What a tremendous armament of
destruction has the Almighty here! Have not the inhabitants of that city
which has seated herself as a queen at the mouth of this river, reason to
remember that the Lord can bury them in a moment in the midst of the sea?
He has only to blow with his wind, and the waters will flow, and the depths
cover them! Let those who openly and remorselessly trample on every law of
God consider this and tremble.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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