Telephone and telegraph messages are being hourly received from points along the river, asking for boats to come and save the unfortunate people, who in many cases are clinging to trees and housetops till help comes.
Many stories are being told of the way the people are rescued.
In some instances the relief steamers will find a whole family perched on the cottage roof, the women and children, half-dead with fright, clinging panic-stricken to the roof, and crying aloud for help. In others the people will not realize the danger they are in, and refuse to be taken off their housetops, insisting that the floods will subside in a short while, and that they need no help.
One party of negroes was found seated on the roof of a cottage. The water had risen to the eaves, and the house was in danger of collapsing under the pressure of the angry waters.
The negroes, however, were busily engaged in playing cards, and were annoyed at being rescued from their perilous position before their game was finished.
The present flood is the worst ever known in the history of the river.
In 1862, during the war, there was a great rise of the Mississippi, which destroyed most of the levees along the banks, and from Vicksburg down the whole country was flooded.
Since that year the river has never risen as high until the present time, when the high-water mark of 1862 has been reached and passed in both New Orleans and Vicksburg.
For twenty-five years after, the people of the Mississippi Valley felt the effects of that great flood, and the worst fears are entertained for the ruin and desolation that the present one will leave in its path.