St. Paul enjoys the double privilege of being the commercial and political capital of Minnesota.  The same is the case with Boston, in Massachusetts, but I do not remember another instance in which it is so.  It is built on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, though the bulk of the State lies to the west of the river.  It is noticeable as the spot up to which the river is navigable.  Immediately above St. Paul there are narrow rapids up which no boat can pass.  North of this continuous navigation does not go; but from St. Paul down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico it is uninterrupted.  The distance to St. Louis in Missouri, a town built below the confluence of the three rivers, Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois, is 900 miles and then the navigable waters down to the Gulf wash a southern country of still greater extent.  No river on the face of the globe forms a highway for the produce of so wide an extent of agricultural land.  The Mississippi, with its tributaries, carried to market, before the war, the produce of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  This country is larger than England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain together, and is undoubtedly composed of much more fertile land.  The States named comprise the great center valley of the continent, and are the farming lands and garden grounds of the Western World.  He who has not seen corn on the ground in Illinois or Minnesota, does not know to what extent the fertility of land may go, or how great may be the weight of cereal crops.  And for all this the Mississippi was the high-road to market.  When the crop of 1861 was garnered, this high-road was stopped by the war.  What suffering this entailed on the South I will not here stop to say, but on the West the effect was terrible.  Corn was in such plenty—­Indian-corn, that is, or maize—­that it was not worth the farmer’s while to prepare it for market.  When I was in Illinois, the second quality of Indian-corn, when shelled, was not worth more than from eight to ten cents a bushel.  But the shelling and preparation is laborious, and in some instances it was found better to burn it for fuel than to sell it.  Respecting the export of corn from the West, I must say a further word or two in the next chapter; but it seemed to be indispensable that I should point out here how great to the United States is the need of the Mississippi.  Nor is it for corn and wheat only that its waters are needed.  Timber, lead, iron, coal, pork—­all find, or should find, their exit to the world at large by this road.  There are towns on it, and on its tributaries, already holding more than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.  The number of Cincinnati exceeds that, as also does the number of St. Louis.  Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that the States should wish to keep in their own hands the navigation of this river.