I once knew a chairman of the school trustees in a town in New Jersey to remove his daughters from the public school simply because the teacher insisted that it was his duty to instruct his pupils in the study of geography.  “My boys may go to sea some day, and then geography may be of service to them,” said this chairman to the teacher, “but if my daughters study it they will waste their time.  Of what use can geography be to girls who will never command a vessel?”

While conscious that I may inflict an uninteresting chapter upon my reader who may have accompanied me with a commendable degree of patience so far upon my lonely voyage, I nevertheless feel it a duty to place on record a few facts that are well known to scientific men, if not to the writers of popular geographies, regarding the existence within the boundaries of our own country of the longest river in the world.  It is time that the recognition of this fact should be established in every school in the United States.  As this is a very important subject, let us examine it in detail.

The Missouri is the longest river in the world, and the Mississippi is only A branch of it.  The Mississippi River joins its current with that of the Missouri about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio; consequently, as we are now to allow the largest stream (the Missouri) to bear its name from its source all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, it follows that the Ohio flows into the Missouri and not into the Mississippi River.  The Missouri, and not the Mississippi, is the main stream of what has been called the Mississippi Basin.  The Missouri, when taken from its fountain-heads of the Gallatin, Madison, and Red Rock lakes, or, if we take the Jefferson Fork as the principal tributary, has a length, from its source to its union with the Mississippi, of above three thousand miles.  The United States Topographical Engineers have credited it with a length of two thousand nine hundred and eight miles, when divested of some of these tributary extensions.  The same good authority gives the Mississippi a length of thirteen hundred and thirty miles from its source to its junction with the Missouri.

At this junction of the two rivers the Missouri has a mean discharge of one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second, or one-seventh greater than that of the Mississippi, which has a mean discharge of one hundred and five thousand cubic feet per second.  The Missouri drains five hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of territory, while the Mississippi drains only one hundred and sixty-nine thousand square miles.  While the latter river has by far the greatest rainfall, the Missouri discharges the largest amount of water, and at the point of union of the two streams is from fifteen to seventeen hundred miles the longer of the two.  Therefore, according to natural laws, the Missouri is the main stream, and the smaller and shorter Mississippi is only a branch of it.  From the junction of the two rivers the current, increased by numerous tributaries, follows a crooked channel some thirteen hundred and fifty-five miles to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Missouri, therefore, has a total length of four thousand three hundred and sixty-three miles, without counting some of its highest sources.