22.] This is the too exuberant expression of
one who had probably never had a hearth of his own in France, but it gives
some intimation of the charm of that great and seemingly infinite sweep of
level ground, which many, and especially unimaginative minds, find so
monotonous.
We cannot be quite sure, when we listen to some recent critics, that
Chateaubriand ever saw this great valley. Certainly we who have grown up
in it have never found his reindeer and moose about our homes (save in our
Christmas-time imaginations). Paroquets that in the woods repeated the
words learned of settlers are not of the fauna known to reputable Ohio
naturalists, nor have two-headed snakes been found except in the vision of
those who see double in their intoxication. The tamarind and the terebinth
are not of its forest-trees. But whether or not Chateaubriand visited it
in person, his imagination had frequent residence upon the Mississippi and
its tributaries. His "Atala" put into French literature a country where
many have loved to dwell, though its fauna and flora were not more
accurate in some respects than the mineralogy and meteorology of the John
Law scheme, known later as the "Mississippi Bubble," that made France wild
with excitement once.
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