From the close of the 17th century until the building of the first railways in the Mississippi basin, in the middle of the 19th century, the waterways of the Mississippi system afforded practically the only means of communication in this region. During the early years of the French occupancy trade with the Indians was the only important industry, and this was carried on almost wholly with birch canoes and a few pirogues; but by 1720 immigrants were coming in considerable numbers both by way of the Great Lakes and the mouth of the Mississippi, and to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding commerce barges and keelboats were introduced. The development of the Mississippi Valley must have been slow until the railways came had it not been for the timely application of the power of steam to overcome the strong current of the Lower Mississippi. Even without the steamboat, however, the Mississippi was indispensable to the early settlers, and the delay of the United States in securing for them its free navigation resulted in threats of separation from the Union. The most formidable movement of this kind was that of 1787–1788, in which James Wilkinson, who had been an officer in the War of Independence, plotted for a union with Spain. Steamboat navigation on this river system was begun in 1811, when the “New Orleans,” which had been built by Nicholas Roosevelt (1767–1854), made the trip from Pittsburg to New Orleans, but it was six years later before the steamboat was sufficiently improved to ascend to St Louis. In 1817 the commerce from New Orleans to the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville, was carried in barges and keel-boats having a capacity of 60 to 80 tons each, and 3 to 4 months were required to make a trip. In 1820 steamboats were making the same trip in 15 to 20 days, by 1838 in 6 days or less; and in 1834 there were 230 steamboats, having an aggregate tonnage of 39,000 tons, engaged in trade on the Mississippi. Large numbers of flat boats, especially from the Ohio and its tributaries, continued to carry produce down stream; an extensive canal system in the state of Ohio, completed in 1842, connected the Mississippi with the Great Lakes; these were connected with the Hudson river and the Atlantic Ocean by the Erie Canal, which had been open since 1825. Before the steamboat was successfully employed on the Mississippi the population of the valley did not reach 2,000,000, but the population increased from approximately 2,500,000 in 1820 to more than 6,000,000 in 1840, and to 14,000,000 or more in 1860. The well-equipped passenger boats of the period immediately preceding the Civil War were also a notable feature on the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi.
In the Civil War the Lower Mississippi, the Ohio, and its two largest tributaries—the Cumberland and the Tennessee—being still the most important lines of communication west of the Appalachian Mountains, determined largely the movements of armies. The adherence of Kentucky to the Union excluded the Confederacy from the Ohio, but especially disastrous was the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, whereby the Confederacy was cut in two and the entire Mississippi became a Federal highway. Under Federal control it was closed to commerce, and when the war was over the prosperity of the South was temporarily gone and hundreds of steamboats had been destroyed. Moreover, much of the commerce of the West had been turned from New Orleans, via the Mississippi, to the Atlantic seaboard, via the Great Lakes and by new lines of railways, the number of which rapidly increased. There was, of course, some revival of the Mississippi commerce immediately after the war, but this was checked by the bar at the mouth of the south-west pass. Relief was obtained through the Eads jetties at the mouth of the south pass in 1879, but the facilities for the transfer of freight were far inferior to those employed by the railways, and the steamboat companies did not prosper. But at the beginning of the 20th century the prospects of communication with the western coast of North America and South America, and with the Orient by way of an isthmian canal, the inadequate means of transportation afforded by the railways, the efficiency of competing waterways in regulating freight rates, and the consideration of the magnificent system of inland waterways which the Mississippi and its tributaries would afford when fully developed, have created the strong demand for river improvement.
Bibliography.—A. P. C. Griffin, The Discovery of the Mississippi: a Bibliographical Account (New York, 1883); J. G. Shea, The Discovery of the Mississippi, in Report and Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, vol. vii. (Madison, 1876); J. V. Brower, The Mississippi River and its Sources: a Narrative and Critical History of the Discovery of the River and its Headwaters (Minneapolis 1893); F. A. Ogg, The Opening of the Mississippi: a Struggle for Supremacy in the American Interior (New York, 1904); E. W. Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi; or, Gould’s History of River Navigation (St Louis, 1889); J. W. Monette, The Progress of Navigation and Commerce on the Waters of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, in the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. vii. (Oxford Miss., 1903); R. B. Haughton, The Influence of the Mississippi River upon the Early Settlement of Its Valley, in the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. iv.; Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Boston, 1883); A. A. Humphreys and H. L. Abbot, Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River (Philadelphia 1861); Annual Reports of the Mississippi River Commission (Washington, 1880 sqq.); E. L. Corthell, A History of the Jetties at the Mouth of the Mississippi River (New York, 1881); J. A. Ockerson, The Mississippi River: Some of its Physical Characteristics and Measures employed for the Regulation and Control of the Stream (Paris, 1900); J. L. Mathews, Remaking the Mississippi (Boston, 1909); R. M. Brown, “The Mississippi River from Cape Girardeau to the Head of the Passes,” in Bulletins of the American Geographical Society, vols. xxxiv. and xxxv. (New York, 1902 and 1903); J. L. Greenleaf, “The Hydrology of the Mississippi,” in the American Journal of Science vol. ii. (New Haven, 1896); L. M. Haupt, “The Mississippi River Problem,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. xliii. (Philadelphia, 1904).
MISSOLONGHI, or Mesolonghi (Μεσολόγγιον), the chief town of the monarchy of Acarnania and Aetolia, Greece. It is on the N. side of the Gulf of Patras, about 7 m. from the coast; pop., about 8300. The place is notable for the siege which Mavrocordato and Botzaris sustained in 1822 and 1823 against a Turkish army 11,000 strong, and for the more famous defence of 1825–26. Byron died here in 1824, and is commemorated by a cenotaph and a statue.
MISSOULA, a city and the county-seat of Missoula county, Montana, U.S.A., on the Clark Fork of the Columbia (here called the Missoula river), about 125 m. W.N.W. of Helena. Pop. (1900), 4366 (1020 foreign-born); (1910), 12,869. It is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound railway, and by the Northern Pacific railway, which has shops here and of which Missoula is a division headquarters. There is an electric railway from Missoula to Hamilton, about 48 m. south. The Northern Pacific railway maintains a large hospital here, and St Patrick’s hospital is maintained by sisters of charity. Missoula is about 3200 ft. above sea-level, with Mount Jumbo immediately north, and University Mountain immediately south of the Clark Fork, and the Bitter Root range to the west. The city is situated on the bed of a prehistoric lake. Missoula is the seat of the Sacred Heart academy (for girls), of a Christian Brothers' school (for boys), of the Garden City commercial college, and of the state university (founded in 1893, and opened in 1895), which occupies a campus of 40 acres. On the Bitter Root river, 4 m. distant, is the United States army post; Fort Missoula. Missoula has considerable trade with the surrounding country in farming, fruit-growing, lumbering and mining. The Clark Fork furnishes water power, and at Bonner, 6 m. east, is the Clark dam (28 ft.), which furnishes electric power. Missoula was founded in 1864, and chartered as a city in 1887.
MISSOURI, a north-central state of the United States of America, and one of the greatest and richest, and economically one of the most nearly independent, in the Union, lying almost midway between the two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and Canada. It is bounded N. by Iowa; E. by Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee; S. by Arkansas; and W. by Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Its N. and S. limits are mainly coincident with the parallels of 40° 35′ and 36° 30′ N. lat.—the southernmost boundary, in the S.E. corner, is the meridian of 36° N. lat.—and much of the western border is the meridian of 94° 43′ W. long. respectively; but natural boundaries are afforded on the extreme N.E. by the Des Moines river, on the E. by the Mississippi, on the S.E. by the St Francis and on the N.W. by the
