Life on the Mississippi | Page 2

sea the width steadily
diminishes, until, at the 'Passes,' above the mouth, it is but little over
half a mile. At the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is
eighty- seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hundred

and twenty-nine just above the mouth.
The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper, but
in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez (three
hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet. But at
Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet; at New Orleans
only fifteen, and just above the mouth only two and one half.
An article in the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat,' based upon reports of
able engineers, states that the river annually empties four hundred and
six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico--which brings to mind
Captain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi--'the Great Sewer.'
This mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two
hundred and forty-one feet high.
The mud deposit gradually extends the land--but only gradually; it has
extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundred years which
have elapsed since the river took its place in history. The belief of the
scientific people is, that the mouth used to be at Baton Rouge, where
the hills cease, and that the two hundred miles of land between there
and the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age of that piece
of country, without any trouble at all--one hundred and twenty
thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country that
lies around there anywhere.
The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to
make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and
thus straightening and shortening itself. More than once it has
shortened itself thirty miles at a single jump! These cut-offs have had
curious effects: they have thrown several river towns out into the rural
districts, and built up sand bars and forests in front of them. The town
of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff has
radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWO MILES ABOVE
Vicksburg.
Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that cut-
off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions: for
instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off
occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land over
on the other side of the river, within the boundaries and subject to the
laws of the State of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper
river in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to

Illinois and made a free man of him.
The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: it is always
changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE. At
Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region it used to
occupy. As a result, the original SITE of that settlement is not now in
Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the State of
Mississippi. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSAND
THREE HUNDRED MILES OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH
LA SALLE FLOATED DOWN IN HIS CANOES, TWO HUNDRED
YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW. The river lies
to the right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places.
Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down at the
mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it builds fast
enough in better protected regions higher up: for instance, Prophet's
Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of land thirty years
ago; since then the river has added seven hundred acres to it.
But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricities for
the present--I will give a few more of them further along in the book.
Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a word about its
historical history--so to speak. We can glance briefly at its slumbrous
first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at its second and wider-awake
epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and widest-awake epoch in a
good many succeeding chapters; and then talk about its comparatively
tranquil present epoch in what shall be left of the book.
The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the
word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and
permanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We
do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates in
American history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just
idea, no distinct