Thomas Jefferson
unobstructed into various rivers, harbors, and the amount of water carried by each river. He is also attentive to possible questions regarding the navigation of certain rivers, with an eye toward future commerce and transportation. He anticipates the Mississippi River to be “one of the principal channels of future commerce for the country westward of the Alleghaney” (131). Aside from his more scientific rendering of the rivers, such as his noting that the channel of the James River is “from 150 to 200 fathom wide,” Jefferson gives himself over to a prideful and somewhat poetic depiction of Virginia’s waterways (129). He describes the Illinois River as “a fi ne river, clear, gentle, and without rapids” (133). He opines, “The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth” (133). The Mississippi River, aside from its promise as a central means for national commerce and trade, provides a home to a host of wildlife. Jefferson lists “turtles of a peculiar kind, perch, trout, gar, pike, mullets, herrings, carp, spatula fish of 50 lb. weight, cat fish of an hundred pounds weight, buffalo fish, and sturgeon” (132). Note that the Mississippi River not only hosts an abundance and variety of aquatic life, but also supplies life to substantially large fish. It is as if Jefferson were already anticipating his response to Buffon’s theory by including a host of rather largesized fish that dwell within Virginia’s rivers. Although Jefferson readily admits, “Since the treaty of Paris, the Illinois and Northern branches of the Ohio since the cession of Congress, are not longer within our limits,” “they shall be noted in their order” (132). It is as though the abundance of life mentioned just prior in his description of the Mississippi River inspired him to lay claim to rivers no longer within the state’s purview. He relies upon the reports of Spanish merchants at Pancore for news on the exact length of the Missouri River (133). Jefferson does display a considerable knowledge of some Spanish colonial territories such as Santa Fe, Potosí, and Zacatecas, even to the extent that he knows that a road extends from the Red River along the coast down to the city of Mexico (133). Although he offers no additional comment on this connection to Spanish colonies, it seems
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certain that Jefferson presents this information as sources of future commerce routes. Indeed, he begins his section on Mexican territories with a brief anecdote regarding the “not inconsiderable quantity of plate, said to have been plundered during the last war by the Indians from the churches and private houses of Santa Fe on the North River and brought to these villages [in Virginia] for sale” (133). In his response to a query regarding the state’s mountains, Jefferson defers to the maps of Fry and Jefferson, as well as to “Evan’s analysis of his map of America for a more philosophical view of them than is to be found in any other work” (142). When he begins to provide names for the mountains, Jefferson obliquely references the American Indians who once inhabited the mountainous region. The Appalachian Mountains, he warrants, received their name from “the Apalachies, an Indian nation formerly residing on it” (142). He defers to their native name for the mountains rather than those imposed on the various ranges from European maps: “European geographers however extended the name northwardly as far as the mountains extended; some giving it, after their separation into different ridges, to the Blue ridge, others to the North mountain, others to the Alleghaney, others to the Laurel ridge, as may be seen in their different maps. But the fact I believe is, that none of these ridges were ever known by that name to the inhabitants, either native or emigrant” (142). To assert the precedence of inhabitants over foreign cartographers, Jefferson includes his own account of the spectacular view afforded in passing from the Potomac through the Blue Ridge (known as the Natural Bridge and Potomac River Gap): “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature” (142–143). “The scene,” Jefferson assures his readers, “is worth a voyage across the Atlantic,” yet he mentions those living in close proximity to the “monuments of a war between rivers and mountains” who have yet to survey the spectacle (143). The critic Richard Slotkin notes of Jefferson’s description of this particular natural wonder: “Jefferson adopts as his vision neither the pastoral