The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Anonymous user) Anonymous user: Finn is, among other things, a novelistic treatment of a raft journey down the Mississippi. At the junction of the Ohiothe Mississippi's depth is eighty-seven feet; the depth increases gradually,reaching one hundred and twenty-nine just above the mouth. And still good, despite describing a forgotten world. Chapter XLVI – … I enjoyed Twain's telling of the history of the Mississippi and steamboats. In a short time the life … We can glance brieflyat its slumbrous first epoch in a couple of short chapters;at its second and wider-awake epoch in a couple more; at itsflushest and widest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding chapters;and then talk about its comparatively tranquil present epochin what shall be left of the book. But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea ofseeking out that river and exploring it. In May of 1861, his career will end because of the Civil War. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world--four thousand three hundred miles. The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Books mentioned in Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder, Blue Pyramid 1,276 Best Books of All Time, Trinity College Booklist (1951): Class Ten, English Literature, The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading, Mississippi Writings: Tom Sawyer / Life on the Mississippi / Huckleberry Finn / Pudd'nhead Wilson, Tom Sawyers Abenteuer | Leben auf dem Mississippi | Verrückte Geschichten, Great Performances: Life on the Mississippi, Oxford American Best Southern Books of All Time (Nonfiction, 13), Reader's Digest World's Best Reading (26), The Guardian's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All-Time (56), (Click to show. “A dead man could get up a better legend than this one. The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper,but in the lower river. An edition of this book was published by Library of America Paperback Classics. Boarding in St. Louis, he takes steamships down to New Orleans and then all the way back up the river to Minnesota. All the other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important in their relations to this. In the first part, he is a cub pilot under his mentor, Horace Bixby, who teaches him how to navigate the treacherous river. This is an interesting part of the book because it includes a fair amount of commentary about life in America after the Civil War, reflecting on the differences between the North and the South. Biography. Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the town of Florida, Missouri, in 1835. An edition of this book was published by Tantor Media. An enjoyable recollection of times past on the Mississippi. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our, Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. 'This mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hundredand forty-one feet high. had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisherand another bishop or two, and was getting his English reformationand his harem effectively started. Click on a plot link to find similar books. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSANDTHREE HUNDRED MILES OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWNIN HIS CANOES, TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW.The river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the left of itin other places. References to this work on external resources. If somebody should discovera creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in,Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither:one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to huntfor each other. All Rights Reserved. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez(three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet.But at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet;at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only twoand one half. Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group. Prologue-Chapter XV.

Chapter XVI – Chapter XXX. Worth reading today as it tells a time that has passed. I'll reread Raban's "Old Glory" to see how good it really is : ) He's so much better at this. The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone:it is always changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE.At Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region itused to occupy. It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, The Mississippi River It marks Twain’s growth from a child wanting to pilot a steamboat to a man who learns firsthand how to do so. The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use,the word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get andpermanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it.We do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates inAmerican history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea,no distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent.To say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River,saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it:it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by astronomicalmeasurements, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;--as aresult, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you don't see the sunset.It would have been better to paint a picture of it. Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by thatcut-off.

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. Summary. Warning: May contain spoilers. These cut-offs have had curious effects:they have thrown several river towns out into the rural districts,and built up sand bars and forests in front of them.The town of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg:a recent cutoff has radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWOMILES ABOVE Vicksburg. But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricitiesfor the present--I will give a few more of them further alongin the book. Ratings. For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been whitesettlements on our Atlantic coasts. Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a wordabout its historical history--so to speak. For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less thana quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions:for instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day,a cut-off occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himselfand his land over on the other side of the river, within theboundaries and subject to the laws of the State of Louisiana!Such a thing, happening in the upper river in the old times,could have transferred a slave from Missouri to Illinois and madea free man of him. Beloved author Mark Twain has always been known for writing in vivid detail, and this essay called "Two Ways of Seeing a River" will show you why. Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain. "Life on the Mississippi" is sandwiched between "The Prince and the Pauper" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", neither of which is similar in form to this book, nor really is it like any of Mark Twain's previous works similar. Born and raised along the Mississippi River, Clemens would start out in life as a steamboat pilot. Of course, parts of "Life on the Mississippi" are similar to his travel books, and he does include an extensive quote from a passage intended to be included in Huckleberry Finn, but he also includes some significant third party material. Afterwards, it's used by the Union Army to transport troops. ).

Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datablefact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newnessof our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspectof rustiness and antiquity. I enjoyed his reminiscences of his time working on the boats as well as him going back years later and going through the changes to the river and the towns along the river as well as the men he knew then. The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrownecks of land, and thus straightening and shortening itself.More than once it has shortened itself thirty miles ata single jump! Section Chapter Written in 1882, Life on the Mississippi is a product of its time but we need this because it shows us where we come from, hopefully getting better but not always. Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’s most profound chronicler of the human comedy. In this piece from his 1883 autobiographical book Life on the Mississippi, American novelist, journalist, lecturer, and humorist Mark Twain ponders the losses and gains of life and its countless experiences. One would expect the priestsand the soldiers to multiply the river's dimensions by ten--the Spanish custom of the day--and thus move other adventurersto go at once and explore it. (Summary from Wikipedia) Genre(s): Nature, Modern (19th C) Language: English. Then some 20 years after that he makes a voyage up the mighty river. In the second part of the book, Twain describes a trip he takes back to the Mississippi in 1882. An edition of this book was published by Recorded Books. THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It discharges three times as much wateras the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine,and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames.No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its watersupply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware,on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idahoon the Pacific slope--a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude.The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water fromfifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats,and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels.The area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areasof England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany,Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile;the Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so.