“NO TIME FOR PRAYIN’: GO TO WORK!”
Such cases were frequent in the recent floods. Greenville, Mississippi, is one of the towns that suffered much. The water from crevasses above came down upon the town, and were stopped by a levee around the city. But while the enemy in the rear could be held in check, it was not so easy to repel the attack upon the river front; and here the water won the day. All efforts were in vain. The forlorn and miserable city appeared as though some savage caricaturist had endeavored to perpetrate a burlesque upon Venice. A few skiffs crept about the muddy currents that answered for streets. On outhouses and fences occasionally might be seen a few melancholy looking fowls. Here some grocer paddled about to see if his patrons wanted aught; yonder went a funeral party in a single boat. Many a weary mile would have to be traversed to reach a dry grave. The lower floors of most houses lay beneath the water, and from the second-story disconsolate people looked out upon the turbid waste, wondering what the end would be.
If the scene upon the levee is exciting when efforts are made to avoid breaks, still more so is it when a small break is being closed. The scurrying to and fro; the hoarse shouting of orders; the wild cries for aid from threatened points; men plunging up to their necks in the rushing flood, driving stakes, dragging sacks of earth, heaving in boulders and rubble stone; others bringing timbers and planks from hundreds of yards away; the dim, smoky glare of countless torches; the burly figures of wearied men begrimed almost beyond semblance of humanity—such a picture is more like a strange nightmare that one never forgets.
Then suddenly there is a general melting away of hundreds of feet of the sodden levee. The fight is lost. Scores of the laborers leave for their homes to save what they can of their property. From farm to farm the news spreads. In the dead hour of the night, when all is serene, the dread cry comes, “the levee is broken,” and then comes a wild stampede for safety, many in their night clothes, women dragging their babes, husbands carrying their
FUNERAL DURING THE FLOOD.
wives, and the poor negroes, wild with terror, unable to do anything but stand and view the scene of the waters rushing to bear them to their doom. Magnificent plantations of yesterday are to-day seas of rushing, foaming water. Here and there in the shallows stand a few shivering, half-starved cattle; and occasionally is seen a family, still hoping that the flood may not be disastrous, clinging to their residence.