Read "Life on the Mississippi, Part 9" by Mark Twain online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company, and started up the river.
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis.