LENGTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
By Mark Twain
MARK TWAIN mourns over the diminished length of the Mississippi in this strain: Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans, was 1,215 miles 176 years ago. It was 1,180 after the cut-off of 1722. It was 1,040 after the American bend cut-off, some years ago. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently, its length is only 973 miles at present. Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and to prove what had occurred in the long past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor development of species, either. Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague—vague. Please observe:— In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see in the Old Oolitic Silurian period, just 1,000,000 years ago last November, the Lower Mississippi river was upward of 1,300,000 miles long, and struck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that 742 years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and a quarter long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.—Christian at Work.