The Mississippi River really cuts our country into two parts, but the two parts are not the same size. The part west of the Mississippi is about twice as big as the part east of the Mississippi.

The Mississippi River hardly gets a good running start on its long journey south to the Gulf of Mexico before it falls down, and where it falls men have built big mills, the wheels of which are turned by the falling water. These mills, however, are not like those in New England. They do not make things. They grind wheat to make flour to make bread, for more and better wheat grows near where the Mississippi starts and the States near-by than anywhere else in the whole World.

An acre seems to me, who lives in a city, a large piece of ground, a hundred acres seems immense, and a thousand acres seems enormous, but some farms in Minnesota where they raise wheat have as many as ten thousand acres of wheat in a single farm! The farmers would never get through planting or gathering the wheat if they did so by hand or even with a horse. So they plow with an engine and often with ten plows in a row, and they use machines for gathering the wheat and for separating the grains of the wheat from the straw, which has to be done before it can be ground into flour.

On opposite sides of the Mississippi near these falls two large cities of almost the same size have grown up. These two cities are connected by a bridge, and they are so nearly the same size they are called Twin Cities. One of them is named Minneapolis, which means “Water City,” as Annapolis means “Anna’s City”; and the other is named St. Paul. Notice that almost all names around the Great Lakes and the Mississippi are named either after saints or after Indians. That’s because priests were among the first to come to this country to make the Indians Christians, and they named places either after the Indians or after the Christian saints.

The water city—Minneapolis—is the greatest flour-making place in the whole World. I have to say “in the whole World” so often, I’m going to use only the first letters from now on—i for “in,” t for “the,” w for “whole,” W for “World”—thus: Minneapolis is the greatest flour-making place Minnesota and the States near it are the greatest wheat-raising States