I went to a house concert abt 10 years ago where a man and wife named Nash sang songs of the sea. He was retired Navy, and they've been collecting for years. He sang a version of Shenandoah which he got from a sailor over 90 years old, and the sailor's last line went:

away, I'm bound away, across this wide world of mis'ry.

Makes more sense than the Missouri any day.

Hey, I live on the Missouri, and I know that going across it doesn't get you anywhere but Kansas, the beginning of the Great American Desert.