The things we do!

This is not observable on
the topographical maps simply because of our unimaginative definition of a
watershed. A watershed is changed, according to that definition, only by
an actual elevation or depression of the surface of the earth, whereas a
railroad or canal that bridges ravines and tunnels or climbs elevations,
or a freight rate that diverts traffic into a new course, as suddenly
raises or lowers and as certainly removes watersheds as if mountains were
miraculously lifted and carried into the midst of the sea.
So there came to be not only two rivers but two valleys, the one of the
lake and prairie plainsmen and the other of the gulf plainsmen. The steam
shuttles flying east and west by land and water wove a pattern in the
former different from the latter but on the same warp. Two widely unlike
industrial and social systems gradually developed, and they, in turn,
struggling for the mastery of lands beyond the Mississippi, divided the
nearer west--once a homogeneous state of mind--into two wests and all but
disrupted the Union.


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