It is directly the reverse along the Mississippi. The planter depends upon the rains, not upon irrigation; upon the accumulated alluvial richness of former ages, and not upon the annual deposit of the river. He does not invite an overflow, but labors to prevent it by every means in his power. A low stage of water, like that of 1864, is hailed as a providential blessing. The unprecedented floods of the present year have swept away millions of dollars worth of property, and produced extreme misery.
The lower Mississippi generally begins to rise in November or early in December, and, with rare exceptions, attains the maximum volume in April or May. The rise is at first gradual, and usually comes from the tributaries below the Ohio. As the season advances, the rains and the melting of the winter snows enlarge the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the upper Mississippi, whose freshets, often amounting to devastating floods, and sometimes becoming vast inundations, are successively poured into the lower Mississippi. Finally, and sometimes as late as June, the Missouri contributes the drainage of the great plains and of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Descending steamboats, which have overtaken and passed the rise, announce the coming of a great tidal wave bringing possible destruction with it. The bottures of the lower river are first covered, the banks are rapidly filled, and the torrent of foaming and turbid waters begins to rush down with accumulated velocity. Immense quantities of driftwood are drawn into the swiftest part of the current, in a continuous line that twists and writhes in the tortuous channel like a great black serpent, or is, day after day, whirled round in vast eddies, as at Port Hudson. Many a Federal soldier who has stood guard on the banks of the Mississippi will remember the great trees, with roots and branches high in the air, that floated down in grim processions, and in the gloom and darkness of the night seemed to glide past like spectral fleets. As the river rises, immense bodies of water escape from the natural channel and flow away into the swamps of Arkansas, Mississippi, and upper Louisiana. The low alluvial plain of the Mississippi becomes a vast reservoir. Without this, it would be impossible to control the flood below. The banks are entirely covered, and the voyager beholds an immense lake spread out before him, whose waters rush through the forest with a subdued and angry roar, the wide open space between the trees alone indicating the course of the river. And now, wherever in this vast region civilization has planted her foot, begins that conflict between man and the elements and the forces of nature, which in one form or another is as old as the human race. In Egypt it was typified in the never-ending contest of Typhon and Osiris. Osiris represented the fertile land of Egypt, the product of the Nile; Typhon, the encroaching desert, as solitary and incomprehensible as the ocean itself, the desert whose storms and waves or shifting sand, respecting only the places they cannot reach, have destroyed armies and caravans, depopulated immense regions, and turned the course of mighty rivers. The old civilization of Egypt, the giant Antaeus of mythology, who could not be vanquished so long as his foot touched the solid, fertile earth, interposed enormous obstacles to the advances and inroads of the desert. Count de Persigny wrote a book during his political imprisonment to prove that the pyramids were built as barriers to protect the alluvial land of the Nile from the encroaching sand of the desert.
To progress is, everywhere, to combat. The human race maintains a perpetual and tremendous strife with the fatality of material things, whether it be in the form of the stubborn elements, the overwhelming forces of nature, or the subtle, inexorable laws that govern the material world. Barbarism is a defeat, from cowardice of spirit; civilization, a triumph over them. And nowhere else is the conflict more terrible than where it is attempted to control the floods that sweep down the valley of the Mississippi from the very heart of the continent. The forces of the winds and of the ocean are not so irresistible. It is a hand-to-hand combat, in which to be vanquished is to be destroyed. The thousands of miles of levees built on the banks of the Mississippi and its great bayous, at an expense of many million dollars, are the means employed to arrest the watery element. In some places they are between fifteen and eighteen feet high, with a base of one hundred and twenty feet. As the threatening river rises against them, they are put in the best condition, and watched with the utmost care, lest the little crawfish, or accident, a storm, or some malicious enemy should make an opening which, ever so small at first, would rapidly enlarge into a crevasse. Sometimes the river bank caves in, carrying away the levee, and permitting the water to rush in uninterruptedly. In the spring of 1863 the writer of this article rode in a carriage one evening around a point of land a few miles above Baton Rouge, which, to the extent of several acres, disappeared during the night. The following day the fields in the rear resembled a large lake. Shortly after the capture of Port Hudson, a portion of the bank slid into the river with a battery of guns. The famous citadel and many of the rebel earthworks on those historical bluffs have since shared the same fate.
Should the levee, from any cause, give way, every possible effort is made to close the breach. Planters from miles above and below hurry to the crevasse with all their available help. Piles are driven into the ground close together, and in two parallel rows a few feet apart, both above and below the opening, and in such a direction as gradually to have the lines approach each other at no great distance in the rear of the crevasse. Between these rows of piles are thrown sacks of earth, hay, or anything that will arrest the rushing flood. Presently the narrowing space between the dams can be spanned with pieces of timber, and then the torrent is soon checked and the levee replaced.
The State of Louisiana paid last year thirty thousand dollars for closing the Bouligny crevasse, a few miles below New Orleans. Crevasses above the city, owing to their greater magnitude, are, however, rarely closed. An effort was made in 1865 to rebuild the great Chim and Robinson levee, on the right bank of the river, a short distance below Port Hudson. This crevasse occurred in 1863, and was of such enormous extent that, through it, a river more than a mile wide and several feet deep rushed out of the Mississippi. A steamboat, several flatboats and rafts, and vast quantities of driftwood were swept into the irresistible torrent. It required over three hundred thousand cubic yards of earth to replace the levee, and an outlay or nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The tremendous flood of last April broke through the newly constructed work. The levee commissioners refused an offer to close the crevasse for eighty thousand dollars, and in a few days a great part of the new levee was swept away. Deep gulches were cut in the plantations where the disaster occurred. The ditches were filled, sandbanks formed in many places, and the sugar-cane fields covered with the débris of the Mississippi. There were two or three crevasses of nearly equal magnitude between Port Hudson and the mouth of Red river, and upper Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi suffered terribly from the overflow, caused in great part by the breaking away of the newly built levees. The entire valley of Red river, whose bottoms furnish perhaps the best cotton lands in the world, was inundated below Jefferson, Texas. Many of the best buildings in Shreveport and Alexandria were undermined. The planters betook themselves to the upper rooms of their houses, and the cattle crowded together on the little knolls found here and there on the river bank. A friend who came down during the inundation stated that he saw at least twenty thousand animals thus perishing from hunger, and being gradually swept away by the rising flood. At one time thirteen parishes were said to be in great part under water. Many millions' worth of property was destroyed, and the unstinted charity of the Federal government to the sufferers, through the Freedmen's Bureau, was measured only by cargoes of provisions sent to their relief.
But the overflows of the Mississippi have this year been still more disastrous. Instead of pouring out successive floods, Red river, the Arkansas, the Ohio and its great tributaries, and even the upper Mississippi have risen simultaneously and poured their mighty inundations into the lower river. The Mississippi was at one time fifty miles wide at Memphis, and the great alluvial plain or basin became an inland sea several hundred miles in length. There have for some time been but few places where landings could be made between Cairo and the mouth of Red river. Days and even weeks must elapse after the river begins to recede at Cairo before it can be affected at New Orleans or even at Vicksburg, so enormous is the body of water that must find its way to the gulf. The bottom-lands of Mississippi, especially those of the Yazoo region, and of upper Louisiana, were nearly all under water before the delta people suffered from the inundation. But as the irresistible flood swept down toward the gulf, levee after levee gave way, and at present the tracts overflowed can be estimated only by parishes and counties, the plantations only by thousands, and the loss of property only by millions of dollars. There are nearly a dozen crevasses between the mouth of Red river and New Orleans, not one of which it has been possible to stop. The crevasse at Grand Levee, Morganza, is a mile wide, and through it rushes a river twelve feet deep. To restrain the mighty flood would require immense levees through the entire delta, several feet higher than those already constructed.
The parish of Tensas, the finest cotton district of Louisiana, is almost entirely under water. The inundation extends far up the Cortableau and almost to the rich prairies of Opelousas. The sugar plantations of Terrebonne and Lafourche are invaded by the flood, and the Opelousas railroad rendered useless. The rich lands of Grosse Tête, Fordoce, and the Marangouin, for the first time in the memory of Creoles, are almost entirely inundated. Thousands of families have been driven from their homes. Certain districts, overflowed for three successive years, begin to assume the appearance of a wilderness. The garfish, the alligator, and wildfowl have, in fact, resumed possession of many of the choicest portions of the state. Should the waters not soon subside, the product of cotton on the bottom-lands of Louisiana and Mississippi will be very small. April is the month for planting, and from present appearances the floods will not begin to recede before the month of May.
So great is the interest of the Northern States in the cotton and sugar produced an the bottom-lands of the Mississippi, that evidently the general government ought to assume the responsibility of rebuilding the levees on a scale that will insure protection. This policy would be at variance with the traditions of the government as regards internal improvements. But neither the planters who have hitherto been assessed for nearly the entire outlay, nor the impoverished states, are now in a condition to do what is required.
Of the two plans proposed far leveeing the delta of the Mississippi, one consists in increasing the number of the bayous, or lateral outlets, and thereby diminishing the volume of water in the main channel; the other, in closing up all the bayous, and, with levees of sufficient strength, retaining the floods in the natural bed of the river. In some remarks made upon the subject by Mr. Banks in Congress, he expressed his preference for the former theory, and intimated his intention, should the proper occasion occur, of advocating a large appropriation by the general government to put it in practical execution. The general government has, in fact, virtually pledged itself to undertake the work as soon as the Southern States again come into the Union. Mr. Banks is well acquainted with the topography of Louisiana, and can estimate the enormous outlay required for leveeing the bayous Lafourche and Plaquemine, to say nothing of the Atchafalaya, and opening new outlets, upon each of which, however small, the work would have to be done as thoroughly and upon as vast a scale as upon the Mississippi itself. This theory is based upon the false assumption that, in case of a bayou or a crevasse, the depth of the river at any point below the outlet is diminished exactly in proportion to the quantity of water taken by it from the main channel. When the great crevasse, over a mile wide, occurred last spring above Baton Rouge, I could not see that the volume of water at Baton Rouge was much diminished thereby, but the current of the river was materially lessened. When several large crevasses occur, of course, both the volume and the current of the river below must be diminished. And the slower the current, the greater the deposit of sediment on the bed of the river, the effect of which is to lift up the whole body of water and increase the tendency to overflow. The great desideratum is to prevent the formation of deposit, which can be done only by maintaining a certain rapidity of current. The more effective and scientific plan would, therefore, seen to be to confine the floods to a single channel by means of levees built sufficiently far back to prevent their destruction by the caving in of the river banks, and strong enough for any emergency. The work of leveeing would thus be concentrated, vast areas of now useless swamp-land would be made available, and the bayous could be used as canals for internal communication. Nor should it be forgotten that, as the regions bordering the tributaries of the Mississippi are settled and the forests cleared up, the actual quantity of water drained from them is from year to year diminished. The floods of the upper Mississippi have already been notably affected by this general law. But disasters like those of the present year, although exceptional, can be averted only by levees constructed upon a gigantic scale, and, as the wilderness of the great alluvial plain whose swamps now receive such vast quantities of water becomes settled like the delta, the levees will have to be proportionally enlarged.