As Lyle Saxon writes in his introduction: "This book is not a history of the Mississippi River in the strict sense of the word, although I have outlined the discovery, the exploration, and the settlement of the valley 1/2but this volume is like a scrap-book in which I have collected men 1/2s thoughts, my own thoughts. These incidents seem to me informative, or amusing, or terrible, or tragic, or fantastic, but they are all a part of the living...