She certainly seems to have her hands full.
She has done her best to keep the African troubles to herself, but the news has at last come out, and with it the fact that Spain cannot spare a single soldier to go and subdue it.
The waters of the Mississippi are still rising, and as yet there is no hope of the floods subsiding.
Every day news is sent of fresh crevasses formed and of more levees broken.
While the city of New Orleans has not yet suffered,
there is hourly fear that it will be flooded. The levees are breaking in all directions, and in the near neighborhood of New Orleans fresh breaks are feared, which will send a vast volume of water flowing toward the city.
A government report from Tennessee says that nearly eight hundred square miles of territory is covered with water, from three to seven feet deep. What cabins are still standing are filled with people and cattle, crowding the upper floors or huddled together on rafts moored to the houses.
In Missouri the levees protecting Davis Island, the home of Jefferson Davis, have given way, and the island is submerged.
Davis Island was densely populated, as about twenty-five hundred people lived on it. Help had to be sent for, and steamers and barges came down and rescued the people and the cattle.