IV. This famous river, the Missisippi, is navigable upwards of two thousand miles, to the falls of St. Anthony in latitude 45°, the only fall we know in it, which is 16 degrees of latitude above its mouth; and even above that fall, our author tells us, there is thirty fathom of water in the river, with a proportionate breadth. About one thousand miles from its mouth it receives the river Ohio, which is navigable one thousand miles farther, some say one thousand five hundred, nigh to its source, not far from Lake Ontario in New York; in all which space there is but one fall or rapide in the Ohio, and that navigable both up and down, at least in canoes. This fall is three hundred miles from the Missisippi, and one thousand three hundred from the sea, with five fathom of water up to {xii} it. The other large branches of the Ohio, the river of the Cherokees, and the Wabache, afford a like navigation, from lake Erie in the north to the Cherokees in the south, and from thence to the bay of Mexico, by the Missisippi: not to mention the great river Missouri, which runs to the north-west parts of New Mexico, much farther than we have any good accounts of that continent. From this it appears, that the Missouri affords the most extensive navigation of any river we know; so that it may justly be compared to an inland sea, which spreads over nine tenths of all the continent of North America; all which the French pretended to lay claim to, for no other reason but because they were possessed of a paltry settlement at the mouth of this river. If those things are considered, the importance of the navigation of the Missisippi, and of a port at the mouth of it, will abundantly appear. Whatever that navigation is, good or bad, it is the only one for all the interior parts of North America, which are as large as a great part of Europe; no part of which can be of any service to Britain, without the navigation of the Missisippi, and settlements upon it. It is not without reason then, that we say, whoever are possessed of this river, and of the vast tracts of fertile lands upon it, must in time command that continent, and the trade of it, as well as all the natives in it, by the supplies which this navigation will enable them to furnish those people. By those means, if the French, or any others, are left in possession of the Missisippi, while we neglect it, they must command all that continent beyond the Apalachean mountains, and disturb our settlements much more than ever they did, or were able to do; the very thing they engaged in this war to accomplish, and we to prevent.