There are some good touches in this opening portion as where the author refers to “ Louis XIV., of inflated memory,” and, speaking of the indifference which attended the discovery of the Mississippi, remarks, “ Apparently, nobody happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious about it so, for a century and a half, the Mississippi remained out of the market and undisturbed. Clemens quaintly calls “ historical history,” as distinguished from that other unconventional history, which he does not define, but certainly embodies in the most graphic form. In the three introductory ones which precede these, the physical character of the river is sketched, and brief reference is made to the early travelers and explorers of the stream, - De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle these latter belonging to the epoch of what Mr.
Clemens’s book, 1 twelve are reprinted from The Atlantic but they are so full of entertaining and instructive matter that they will repay a second reading.
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