It takes the waters about a month to travel from the melting snows on the north and north-west to the Gulf. At the mouth of the Missouri the flood rises about twenty-five feet; below the Ohio the rise is sometimes more than fifty feet, while at New Orleans it seldom exceeds twelve feet. The greater height, caused by the addition of the waters of the Ohio to the flood, is reduced in Louisiana by the passage of much of the flow through the Atchafalaya, La Fourche, and other bayous, into the Gulf of Mexico.
On our arrival at the capital, we found that the Queen had not been searched, for telegraphic communication with points below had been cut off by the flood.
CHAPTER XXIX.
UP THE RIVER FOR MANY DAYS.
Colonel Hungerford was even more vexed at the failure of the plan to arrest the fugitives than I was. But Baton Rouge was on the last of the bluffs that one sees in descending the great river, and above the region of continuous levees. There was no doubt we could operate from this region, and secure the capture of the fugitives.
"How long since the Queen left?" asked the governor, of the man who had given us the information.
"She must have been gone nearly three hours," he replied.
"The fugitives are not likely to leave the steamer before she gets to Vicksburg, for there is no railroad from any point this side of that city. It is thirty-five miles from here to Bayou Sara. The steamer may stop there, and may not," said the governor, musing. "That is the last place in this State at which she is at all likely to make a landing. I will telegraph at once."
Without waiting to see any of our passengers ashore, I went with the governor to the telegraph office. He sent the dispatch to an official, directing him to board the steamer, if she did not stop, and arrest the fugitives, a sufficient description of whom I gave him. When this was done, Colonel Hungerford had time to attend to the landing of the party. He insisted that all the passengers should go to his residence and stay over Sunday with him. Colonel Shepard declined, and declared that he and his family had no claims upon his hospitality. A good-natured controversy ensued, and ended in the Colonel and all the others yielding the point.