FLOODS IN THE SOUTH.
“‘Mother dear, the water’s coming after!
Mother, ’tis between us and the hill!’
Looking down, they see the flood, with laughter
Lapping idly ’neath the window sill.
* * * * *
‘Mother, in the water we are wading!
Mother, it grows deeper as we go!’
‘Hasten, children! hasten--day is fading!’
Higher creeps the river, black and slow.
* * * * *
‘Mother, ’tis so deep, and we are dripping!
Mother, we are sinking! Haste, oh haste!’
In her arms uplifting them and gripping,
On she plunges, wading to the waist.
* * * * *
Flowers the river snatches, while it calls so--
Flowers its lean hands never snatched before,
Will it snatch these human flowers also,
Where they cling, sad creatures of the shore?”
Every country is confronted with a serious problem in its great rivers.
In some lands the only problem is, how to get rid of flood-water as
quickly as possible: in others, comes the additional question of
securing sufficient water for irrigation during the dry season. Egypt
occupies an anomalous position, the latter question being the only one
of any practical interest. Without rains, she depends on the rise of the
Nile for her existence, and no one dreams of such a thing as endeavoring
to check the overflow. During seed-time the fellaheen may be seen
sometimes in mud knee-deep, busily planting their fields; and in summer
they may be seen hoisting water from the stream and emptying it into
their irrigating ditches.
In our own land, we have hitherto had no need of irrigation, except in
those districts where there is no fear of a flood: such as the arid
regions of our southwestern states. In China, the people are contending
with both sides of the problem; and their success in the second feature
has not greatly surpassed their achievements in the first. In most other
lands, the flood problem is the chief one. The Amazon at flood time
rises from sixty to one hundred feet, and its volume is almost
inconceivable. But since the larger part of its course lies in an almost
uninhabited region, the high water gives no concern to the people. The
Orinoco rises so high, and is in such a level region, that during part
of the year one of its upper tributaries flows backward and reaches the
Amazon.
The great length of the Mississippi and Missouri present the gravest
difficulties. The sources of each lie in regions where heavy snows fall
during a considerable part of the winter: and all the melting snows of
the central portion of the country--from western Pennsylvania to
Colorado, Montana and central Dakota--must find their way to the sea by
way of the single stream. By reason of the difference in latitude and
altitude, the melted snows of the head-waters usually swell the lower
river in May and early in June, after the spring rains are over. But it
quite often happens that after unusually heavy winter snows the warm
weather sets in in the mountains very early: so that the great floods of
the upper valleys reach the lower river just when extremely heavy rains
are prevalent in the central and southern regions. This forms a
combination that is terrible to combat, and is the cause of all the
trouble. The present system is effective in ordinary cases; but for the
occasional great exceptions it has hitherto proved insufficient. We do
not seem to be any nearer a practical solution of the problem than when
it first presented itself. Yet, the government of the United States
spends millions of dollars every year in attempts which have, so far at
least, proved totally futile to confine the great river within its
banks, and so avoid the perils which every spring threaten an area
larger than all New England and the Middle States.
The wonderful and often terrible changes that come with the changes of
season, and which produce such effects as the illustrations show, are
simply inconceivable to one who has not seen them. That a stream so
quiet and comparatively small as the Mississippi is at low water, should
become a raging torrent of twenty miles average width, and ten feet
average depth from shore to shore, throughout the eleven hundred miles
from Cairo to the sea, is simply incredible until one has seen it. This
river, however, did that in 1882, when the great general overflow
occurred. Unnumbered lives were lost that year, and the damage to
property was never even estimated. Details were hard to get when
communication was so nearly cut off as it then was; and after the floods
were over, no effort was made to reckon the extent of the disaster.
Since that spring the reports have not indicated any flood equal to the
present one; and the only reason why this year has not proved as
disastrous as 1882, is that the levees have been strengthened since
then. The fact, however, that the levee system has, as a whole,
successfully withstood the pressure of the highest water known for many
years, is by no means as reassuring as it seems on first consideration;
for there is grave reason to believe that the levees themselves serve to
increase the very danger against which they are a guard.
The planters of the earlier days made efforts to protect themselves by
means of “levees:” a name given by the
[Illustration: TROPICAL FLOOD.]
French to dykes, or artificial banks, and meaning simply “raised
places.” But of later years, both state and national resources have been
spent freely in endeavoring to curb the restless giant. More than
$25,000,000 has been spent in this way since the war. The Mississippi
River Commission, organized in 1879, under the supervision of the War
Department, as the Signal Service has been, had nominally in view the
increasing of facilities for navigation; but as the methods employed for
the two objects have necessarily been much the same, no little has been
done for protection.
The character of the lower Mississippi and its valley gravely increase
the difficulties of the case. Its bed has been worn for ages through a
somewhat elevated region, and at present the resultant valley has a
width varying from twenty to one hundred and fifty miles. The result has
been that the channel of the river shifts continually, and is extremely
crooked, literally turning time and again to every conceivable point of
the compass. These curves present the most vexatious features the levee
system must contend with; for it is easily perceived that the levee on
the convex side of the bend in the river has the current directed full
against it, adding the great eroding power of the water to the weight it
must sustain.
“The levees are relied on as the chief aid to the work of the
commission, but the commission does not construct them, or even work
directly to strengthen them. These levees are nothing more than
artificial banks or heaps of soil shoveled up along the line of the
natural banks. The commission is working to narrow the wide places in
the river, so as to secure a uniform width of three thousand feet. This
is done by constructing revetments, consisting principally of mattrasses
of wire and brush, which are secured by rubble-stone. In other places
great quantities of stone are
[Illustration: MAKING MATS FOR LEVEE FRONTS.]
dumped, and various similar means are used to encourage the scour in the
shallower parts of the river, and also to prevent the undermining of the
natural or artificial banks.
“On a convex shore, where the water is shoal, the levee has been carried
along the river edge as near as possible, as there is no danger, under
such conditions, of a caving bank. Where the bank is liable to give way,
the levees are placed further back, and where a break in the levee
itself has occurred from the caving of the bank, loops are made, joining
the two broken parts. It must be borne in mind that the banks proper
along the river are about forty feet high above low water, and as the
river rises five to seven feet over these banks, the levees are
constructed of sufficient height to restrain the waters within their
proper limits. The material is found on the spot, either clay or sand,
as the case may be. A so-called “muck” ditch a few feet wide is dug
along the center line of the projected levee, down to where the earth is
comparatively free from all organic matter, such as grass and roots of
trees. By this method some adhesion to the ground is gained, and the
artificial construction is not easily swept away. The earth is taken
from the front of the levee line as near the water as the circumstances
will permit. Standard levees have a “crown,” or width at the top, of
eight feet, except in the case of a very low levee, when the “crown” is
not less than its height. The side slopes are one vertical to three or
three and one-half horizontal. Present levees are carried up from two to
three feet above the high-water mark of their position.”
The river channel, in general, in the upper danger region, adheres to
the right side of the valley, and on the left the danger lies chiefly at
a few points where the bluffs recede considerably from the river.
Throughout the middle and lower flood districts the bends of the stream
are so numerous and capricious that the danger lies equally upon either
side of the stream. Hence, the levee system is not uniform. The whole
alluvial front of the river is leveed on the left bank, the principal
line extending from Horn Lake, just below Memphis, to Vicksburg,
covering the great Yazoo Basin. On the right bank of the river there are
four principal sections which are liable to be overflowed. The first is
known as St. Francis front, which runs from Commerce, Missouri, to the
St. Francis River. The White River front is the second, extending from
Helena, Arkansas, to the mouth of the White and Arkansas Rivers. The
third and fourth, known as the Tensas and the Atchafalaya fronts, run
respectively from the Arkansas River to the Red River in Louisiana, and
from the Red River to New Orleans. The first two sections have received
no government work except in limited localities, where it was merely
incidental to the work of river improvement undertaken by the
commission; and those fronts are everywhere exposed to the overflow,
except where private enterprise has done the work. The Social Circle
Levee, near Laconia, Arkansas, is an example, and a notable one, of what
has been done by the residents. These unprotected tracts have all been
submerged, and the low lands turned into an enormous lake.
The overflow waters that pass over the upper part of this section spread
over the northeastern part of Arkansas as far back as the high ground,
reaching their greatest width about opposite Memphis, and then pass back
into the Mississippi by way of the St. Francis River. The overflow below
Helena is carried back by the White River. From Arkansas City down, the
river, comprising the third and fourth sections, is completely leveed.
Throughout all the lowland districts are hundreds of farms and valuable
plantations, the soil being built up by
[Illustration: STRUGGLE TO HOLD THE LEVEE.]
ages of alluvial deposits. Most of the towns are built on high ground;
there being a few notable exceptions. A general flood in this valley
means that millions of acres of land are submerged, and such crops as
are in the fields are destroyed. More frequently, the land is flooded
just at planting time, and the land remains wet too long to allow
certain crops to be planted in season. Thus, the water in the flooded
districts may abate in time to allow a fair cotton crop; while the
chance for corn is lost. Fences and small outbuildings are floated away,
and often large numbers of stock are drowned; but, after, all, the
chief damage is usually indirect: the evil of hindrance rather than of
destruction. Further, the retiring water leaves numerous pools and
marshes that are rank breeders of malaria, adding vastly to the
unhealthiness of the country.
In many places there are marshy or timbered tracts adjacent to the river
that are not available for cultivation. In these districts the levees
are often erected at the border of the cultivable land, so that the
river has a large area of waste land over which to spread the surplus
water without doing any injury. Such areas really aid to reduce the
high-water level. In some cases, a second or third levee is built some
hundreds of yards to the rear, to serve as a sort of reserve, in case
the river break through the first.
Doubtless the reader has pictured to himself a flooded district as
something like a stream in a mountain gorge; an immense torrent of water
rushing at race-horse speed, uprooting trees, tearing away huge
boulders, sweeping away houses in an instant, without a moment’s
warning, and drowning young and old by scores. If such be his idea, he
will find it necessary to remodel it; or, rather, to cast it away
entirely. Let him follow a guide to the scene of danger. A great levee,
the protection of thousands of acres of rich lands, and perhaps millions
of dollars worth of property, is announced unsafe. Sometimes it is
decided to abandon the river line, weakened for long distances, and
erect a new levee some hundreds of yards to the rear.
But if the design be to hold the line already established, then the
scene is an animated one. All along the narrow ridge of earth patrolmen
are watching the work at every point. Hundreds of men work day and night
throwing up and strengthening the levees, upon which the salvation of
the district depends. Break after break occurs,
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN TORRENT.]
and it is as fast mended. The waves caused by the rough March winds send
great volumes of water splashing over the weak embankment, almost
washing the men off their feet. The work is continued all day, force
relieving force at night. Thousands of lanterns flashing in the
darkness, as the men pass to and fro with wheelbarrows filled with sacks
of earth and lumber, present a scene weird and ghostly. At intervals
during the night the sound of steam whistles tell of some new break,
some new danger to face and overcome. Often the negroes seem little
disposed to work, even at good wages, preferring to sit on the levee and
fish. But when the danger is fully upon them, they can work furiously.
Sometimes, in leading the forlorn hope, some energetic old fellow may
shout to his terrified, pious brethren, “Dis is no time for prayin’--go
to work!” Out on the border districts where help is not easily obtained,
even the wives and daughters of planters--ladies of culture and
refinement, it may be--sometimes turn out and toil in the mud and rain,
contending with the foe that threatens their homes. If the levees before
a great city be threatened, as frequently occurs, the scene becomes
still more exciting. Business is almost entirely suspended in the city
and the clerks in the dry goods stores, the lawyers, the merchants and
the common laborers stand shoulder to shoulder with picks and shovels
fighting the common enemy. What the outcome will be no one knows. All
are alarmed. Hundreds of boats are moored to back-doors, ready for use
when the worst shall come. Merchants have placed their goods high up in
their stores, hoping the waters will not reach them when they rise.
Housekeepers have packed up their goods out of the way of the water and
laid in stores enough to last for weeks, in case it becomes necessary to
stay indoors for that length of time. All railway communication with the
outside world is cut off, nearly all the tracks being several feet
under water. The mails are sent miles away, by boat.
[Illustration: “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
[Illustration: 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.
The view of a crevasse in an inland levee, miles away from the channel,
is strikingly grand; but for those in its path the grandeur is lost in a
feeling of despair and danger. The ocean presents a different spectacle,
for the ocean has no swift current, and its waves are greater. The
foaming mountain torrent can not compare with it, for the mountain
torrent is at best but a few yards in breadth. But in the swollen river
is found an apparently illimitable expanse of water, heaving restlessly
under the swift foot of the wind, or foaming and dashing at the roar of
the storm, hurling itself in billows upon the toilers on the levee, and
striking them into the ditch beyond, yet, with all the fury expended
laterally, rushing seaward almost with the speed of a train. For miles
between the levee and the main channel the stream pours through a great
forest, or canebrake, or cypress swamp.
The fearful noise of a crevasse may be heard for a long distance. No
need to tell the planters far inland the meaning of that distant hoarse
murmur. Approaching the break, the murmur swells to a deep sullen roar.
The water comes tearing through the dense forest at race-horse speed,
not in a broad belt, but closing in from every direction, pouring into
that break as into an immense funnel. As far as the eye can penetrate
into that dense, gloomy forest, it is raggedly carpeted with a heavy,
tossing sheet of snow-white foam. It breaks over stumps, snags and the
up-turned roots of fallen trees, flinging white clouds of spray up among
the branches of trees overhead, mounts in snowy billows over piles of
driftwood, it snarls, hisses and roars like some mad monster at
everything in its path, and then plows in one solid foaming mass into
that raging maelstrom between the ragged, frothy jaws of the crevasse.
[Illustration: BREAKING OF THE LEVEE.]
“Nearest the break, just as it sweeps into the crevasse, it curls on
either side, and huge breakers mark the line where it chafes the
crumbling ends of the levee. Once beyond the broken barriers, it plunges
into a wild, lonesome-looking swamp, that still shows the tracks of the
former disaster. Here, for the first time, the real power of this
tremendous flood begins to assert itself. Supple young trees, eight or
ten inches in diameter, are bent and stripped of every leaf, their naked
branches and twigs whipping the foaming surface of the rustling
cataract.
“It sweeps into the standing timber with a hoarse roar, foaming around
sturdy trunks, and here and there one sees a tall tree swaying to and
fro like a drunken man: then caught in some fierce eddy, it is twisted
from its roots, and reeling around and around it falls into that
tremendous current and is swept away to swell the tangled dams of drift
beyond.”
As far inland as the eye can reach there is nothing but flood to be
seen, the currents opening out and racing away in every direction. At
some distance away may be seen a flooded settlement, the water washing
the windows of fifteen or twenty abandoned cottages. On a huge mound
some five or six feet out of the outflow, is a group of disconsolate
horses and mules who have taken refuge from the rising flood, and other
hungry-looking brutes wander over the levee.
But once out of the immediate neighborhood of the break, the character
of the scene changes. The current slackens, as the water spreads out
like an immense fan, and at length becomes almost imperceptible. It may
come in the night, giving no warning of its approach. It steals through
the grass-lands like a serpent. The slumbering family hear no sound. The
water creeps stealthily around the house, like the Red men in the olden
days.
[Illustration: SURPRISED BY THE WATER.]
The morning sun finds it lapping uneasily in the breeze against the
threshold. The wakening family find it crawling across the floor toward
their beds. They look upon a region that appears a vast marsh; grass
tops, bushes, little islets and tall trees, everywhere rising out of the
water. In the barnyard the drowsy cattle chew their cuds in peaceful
unconsciousness of the wily foe. The pig in the lower corner of the lot
grunts contentedly to find his wallow freshly moistened. The quacking
duck paddles complacently about the fields. The farmer watches anxiously
the progress of the flood, trusting that there may be no necessity of
leaving. Valuable property that can not be removed is taken to the
second floor, if there be one. A boat, if there be one, is carefully
overhauled to be ready for an emergency.
Noon comes. The flood has risen but a few inches. The cattle eye the
water curiously. The negroes in their cabins speculate upon the future,
and each tells his tale of “hair-breadth ’scapes and ventures” in other
days, and one and all agree that “_dis_ ain’t no flood--sho! no! You
orter hab seed the big high water way back in seventy-four. _Dat_ was
sumfin’ like;” and in humble submission to the opinions of some old
granny of unknown age and grizzled wool, it is unanimously allowed that
“we ain’t got no cause to be skeered _dis_ time; not much!” So the
happy-go-lucky fellows sit and chat, while some oily skinned picaninnies
wade to deeper parts of the water, cast in their hooks and begin to swap
tales of the wonderful fish their progenitors had caught in other
floods, and to wonder if more brilliant achievements may not be recorded
of them.
The wind rises. The great crevasse, miles away, has widened till it is
hundreds of yards in extent and many feet in depth, pouring upon the
land millions of cubic feet of water every minute. With the swelling
breeze, the flood goes surging inland in long, low, lazy waves. The
planters who have not already taken flight, conclude it is useless to
endeavor to remain. If the way is open, the cattle are driven inland to
the hills. Some of the negroes straggle after their employers; others
cling to their rude log cabins--all they have to lose--it may be that
the flood will not be serious. So long as corn meal and bacon abound,
they may enjoy an endless picnic. They can fling their lines from time
to time into the stream, and perchance vary their repasts with fish-fry
or turtle stew.
Evening comes. The lazy waves now nearly reach the window-sills upon the
lower floors. The cattle left behind low uneasily as they move about in
water knee-deep. No one is near to feed them, and the udders of the cows
are swollen with milk. Here and there a mule is seen, stamping
impatiently and braying mournfully for lack of feed. The water displays
a decided but wayward current, swirling now this way, now that. All the
land is covered. Here and there numerous snakes have crawled into the
bushes to escape the yellow flood. Out in a lowland tract a deserted
shanty bobs idly along, now grounding a moment, now floating lazily
around a great tree, finally becoming an item of the great mass of drift
that has lodged at the edge of the forest, and swarms with small animals
flying from the clutch of the crawling water. The game of the canebrakes
and swamp regions has fled to the uplands, and from time to time some
needy refugee family, heedless of game laws, adds venison to its scanty
store.
The night wears away. The negro cabins are deserted: most have floated
away with the growing current. The simple folk have abandoned them. Some
have made their way to the levees, hoping for a passing steamer. Others,
dwelling above the crevasse, have little to fear from currents; and as
the water rises around them, they take to hastily constructed rafts,
transferring their few household effects thereto, and dwelling for days
in a floating camp, sheltered from the rain by a wagon-sheet or old
quilts stretched over a low ridge-pole. Mooring the rafts to trees, they
lead, to others a romantic, to themselves a precarious existence.
[Illustration: NOT SO ROMANTIC AS IT LOOKS.]
A whole village deserted by its people wears a singularly melancholy
aspect. Let the reader row with a press correspondent through the little
town of Bayou Sara La, as it appeared during the recent overflow. The
town lies on rolling ground, dotted here and there with low hills or
drifts of sand and alluvial deposits, left thereby the floods of ages
ago.
“Even over the center of the roadway back from the front street, which
is just behind the levee, it is unusual to find less than four feet of
water, while in many places a nine-foot oar can not be made to touch
bottom. In some of what, in times of low water, are beautiful residence
streets, the boat as it went gliding on the shining moonlight flood
would pass so close under the spreading branches of the great live oaks,
which interlock their boughs over the roadway, that her occupants would
be compelled to bend down almost level with the gunwales to avoid being
swept off the thwarts. The freaks of the currents wandering through the
flooded streets seem wholly unaccountable. Sometimes they would run
parallel with, and at others directly at right angles to the streets.
Often progress would be blocked by long sections of wooden-plank
sidewalks, gates, doors and cisterns that had formed barriers across the
street, while at every turning the boatman would be compelled to dodge
huge floating masses of drift in which out-houses, timbers, sections of
roofs and other heavy wreckage inextricably commingling were slowly
floating on the lazy current.
“The air was soft and balmy as that of a midsummer night, and the mellow
light of the young moon that was already hanging low over the great sand
hills to the westward, spread a soft pale light of deep blue on the
bright spangled sky. There were faint night breezes waving the topmost
branches of the great shade trees, but they did not touch the
rippleless, shining flood which gleamed in long narrow paths. The white
moonbeams that, like ribbons of burnished silver, but slept inky and
motionless under the black shadows of the trees, and the rounded
outlines of each great shade tree was sharply reflected in the
mirror-like surface of the water and bordered by a dainty rim of silver.
Houses with snow-white walls were faithfully mirrored in that
motionless, glittering flood. While to the eastward of each lay a long,
deep shadow--a starless night--huge shapeless masses of wreckage
drifting past black opaque shadows that grew longer and more intense as
the young moon sank so low that her lower horizon was dipping behind a
great hoary-crested sand hill in the west. The scene was exquisitely
beautiful, but at the same time weird and uncanny. Not a human voice was
heard, but near at hand between the lower whispering of the softly
dipping oars came the ever varying chorus of the frogs mingling with the
low musical murmuring of the mighty river and the deep sullen roar of
the crevasse on the far off southern shore. There the sides of the skiff
would brush the perfumed shrubbery of a submerged lawn; there could be
seen the tree-tops of a splendid orchard just rising out of the flood,
their lower limbs swaying and bending with the current. In all this
scene of beautiful ruins there was a sense of utter loneliness that was
strangely oppressive. Of those who a week ago filled this bright and
hustling little town to overflowing, only six families remain. The
others have all fled to the adjoining hills, leaving their houses to
their fate till the water shall have subsided.”
Such villages as are not deserted have little to do with the world
beyond. The post-offices are often exhausted, in addition to the fact
that the nearest points not blockaded are miles away; so that the
telegraph only brings
[Illustration: TELEGRAPHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.]
news from beyond, or tells the world how fares the little hamlet. The
operator may be driven to the upper story, or to the roof, there to
dispute possession with stray turtles or snakes, or to listen to the
hoarse remonstrance of some old bullfrog whose nocturnal rest is broken
by the clicking of the key. All around is a dreary waste of water, on
which the gleam of the moon appears like a ghostly foot-path, and the
dark shadows of the naked-limbed trees menace like gaunt spectres. From
his elevated position the operator may see the flash of the search-light
of a steamer miles away, as the vessel flits along the stream,
collecting refugees from the shores; and ever and anon the deep harsh
bray of the fog-horn breaks the stillness. Save for these distant tokens
of life there is
“Death and silence! death and silence!
Death and silence all around!”
At the great crevasse itself the spectacle is exciting. The fight is not
abandoned. Desperate efforts are made to secure the ends from further
washing. That once done, there is hope of closing the gap. At the
extremity of the break a floating pile-driver is fiercely hammering
heavy timbers into the spongy soil. There a tiny, fussing tug is engaged
in trying to float a mat of brushwood against the broken bank, while a
score of anxious men are watching an opportunity to peg it down. Others
endeavor to weave pliant branches among the driven piles to afford a
better hold for the guano sacks of earth that are being thrown into the
break. From these moist earth is often washed out by the powerful
current as though it were melting sugar; while now and then some timber,
undermined by the steadily deepening current, leaps upward as though
endowed with a life of its own, and dashes away on the foaming stream.
After hours of the fierce contest, the ends are at last secured. The
pigmy has stopped the giant. The work progresses more easily, now that
the workers are sure of their ground. The stubborn creatures contest
every inch of space. The roar of the battle goes up incessantly. One
fights for life, the other for liberty--such liberty as the tyrant asks
of his subjects; such liberty as the wolf asks of the sheep, or the hawk
of the doves; such liberty as the strong has always demanded of the weak
and defenseless.
By and by the voice of the struggling monster grows weaker. The
persistent creatures that swarm about him assault him with renewed vigor
and pertinacity. The roar of the conflict dies away by degrees. Step by
step the two bands of men approach each other. Only a narrow channel
remains. Presently the forces clasp hands over the chasm. In a few
moments there remains but a tiny, remonstrant, murmuring trickle of
water. Another stroke and it is finished. The pigmy has conquered the
giant. The ant has chained the elephant.
But what, in the meantime, has been the fate of the district along the
levee front? Here the water does not rise slowly and stealthily as in
the regions far inland, where the force of the current is lost. The
planters and all their available forces, it may be, have been busily
fighting the rising floods, but have been finally vanquished momentarily
by wind and wave. Hoping to hold the levee, few, perhaps, have removed
their families, goods, or chattels, or livestock. Then when the break
comes, the raging flood rushes in over the fields and woods, demolishing
out-houses, shaking cottages, drowning stock, hurling masses of drift
against dwellings that might otherwise stand--seeming as though a living
genius of destruction.
Here a family, carrying only a few changes of clothes, and a purse but
too scantily filled, hurry wildly toward the river front, in hope that a
passing steamer may pick them up; there a planter who has saved his
family is hurrying a drove of cattle to the levee, vaguely wondering, in
the mean time, how he shall feed them if the flood lasts long; here a
negro family, chattering noisily like frightened crows, trudges through
water and mire knee-deep or waist-deep, bearing on their heads bundles
of dirty bedding, or old clothes--one or two lugging sacks of meal and
flitches of bacon, with a blind confidence that they
[Illustration: RESCUING PEOPLE IN INLAND DISTRICTS.]
have made sufficient provision for every emergency. There a forlorn
squatter is punting a rude raft with his few belongings slowly athwart
the restless flood. Yonder a band of negroes, unaware of the break in
time to reach the river, have congregated in an old gin house, and swarm
upon its roof, yelling and gesticulating wildly in their terror, for
aid, which they fear will never reach them; and, as the water rises
higher, roofs, barns, hen-coops, and carcasses go floating past or lodge
against their frail support, increasing their peril every moment. Some
moan and cry; others pray vigorously, confessing their misdeeds with
voluble freedom; occasionally there is some old crone who terrifies her
auditors with the assertion that “de Lord is sendin’ another ’varsal
flood on men for deir wickedness,” at which the wicked groan and cry,
and the pious clap their hands and shout, trusting to shortly see the
salvation of the Lord. In the distance appear a few figures perched in
trees, seeming like enormous crows; over yonder, some unfortunate has
shinned up a telegraph pole, which creaks and sways with the rush of the
water, threatening constantly to return the trembling refugee to the
flood beneath. The last unfortunates have straggled to the levee. The
rest must wait for relief. Here and there a few cattle stand lowing in
water half over their sides; a restless, snorting horse plunges
impatiently about. A floating tree-trunk strikes them from their
hillock, to swim aimlessly about till other drifting masses ride them
down. A hen-coop floats past, on which a hungry chanticleer is perched,
occasionally challenging the flood, and in the meantime, with sidelong
glance eyeing the confusion and in undertones discussing the case with
his half-starved, feathered harem.
It is a motley throng that huddles along the levee. That narrow strip of
earth, but eight feet wide at best, is
[Illustration: CAMPS ON THE LEVEE.]
all that is left as a footing for hundreds. The wares swash heavily at
their feet; or sometimes, as the wind blows stronger, they leap clear
over the frail embankment. Trudging wearily back and forth on the
clayey, slippery dykes are planters, once well-to-do, with families of
culture and refinement; others of a middle class, and occasional
specimens of a type denominated by the “man and brother” as “po’ white
trash” are to be seen among the throng. The “man and brother” is usually
in the majority in the lowland districts, and adds greatly to the
picturesqueness of the levees in time of flood. Some rear their tiny
excuses for tents along the bank, and spend the time in uneasily
watching the turbid water. Occasionally some Dinah or Chloe, who has
been on the levee for a week, goes through the motion of washing clothes
in the surging stream, gaining thereby the approval of conscience over a
duty performed, whether the garments be improved or not. Here there is
little concern, these being wandering roustabouts who had nothing to
lose; there some grizzled Uncle Tom bemoans the loss of his two scrawny
mules, and the few pigs and fowls, and his favorite cow, which represent
the savings of years from his toil in his little patch of corn and
cotton; and he feels even sorer over his losses than the rich planter
who has lost a hundred times as much. So the little bands assemble,
mingle and disperse, comparing notes, and all waiting in painful anxiety
for some steamer to pick them up before the sodden levee shall dissolve
beneath their feet and leave them struggling in the stream. At length
the government relief boat appears, and gathers the throngs by hundreds,
to transport them to higher lands. Beyond the levee, skiffs and
flat-boats move about the submerged region, picking up the people who
have taken refuge on the housetops, among the trees, or on piles of
drift. None on the levee fear being passed in the night, for the
powerful search-light illuminates every straggling group.
[Illustration: WAITING FOR A STEAMER.]
On reaching a place of safety from the waters, scores of the refugees
are almost penniless, and the question of food is a pressing one. The
liberal contributions of scores of generous souls suffice but for a
short time. The government must again come to the front, and issue
rations, or a money equivalent, sufficient to maintain the destitute
till the falling of the waters allows them to resume labor upon their
lands. After that, the crop-lien system in vogue in the South enables
the people to get credit of their merchants until the cotton-picking or
corn-gathering.
[Illustration: THE SEARCH-LIGHT.]
When the waters subside, and the people return, it is often difficult
to find old landmarks. In one place huge trenches may be washed out; but
away from the immediate vicinity of the crevasse the land is covered
with mud, varying from a few inches to four or five feet in
thickness--sufficient guarantee of amazing fertility, when the ground
becomes dry enough to work. In the numerous little depressions in the
surface are stagnant pools that linger for a month or two. The larger
ones, if not before filled, are converted into ponds or marshes, which
only thorough draining will destroy. The air is tainted by the hundreds
of carcasses that are entangled in the heaps of drift. The hot dank
soil, steaming under the summer sun, brings disease in the wake of the
flood.
Louisiana, from its character, is usually the principal sufferer: the
Arkansas borders fare little better. All along the course of the stream
the land is dotted with lakes and pools and marshy lands, created by
former overflows. Along the lower portion of the river bayous or sloughs
open from either bank, and meander lazily toward the gulf. As showing
the character of the country may be mentioned the Little and St. Francis
Rivers, which flow southward from southeast Missouri, nearly parallel to
the Mississippi, and but forty miles from it at their furthest points.
In flowing one hundred and twenty miles south they double and twist,
expanding into sluggish bayous as broad as the Mississippi itself, or
into shallow island-dotted lakes; and the total length of the numerous
bends and whimsical curves of the main stream, St. Francis, is over two
hundred miles. In like manner, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, is but fifty miles
from the mouth of the sluggish sandy Arkansas as the crow flies; but to
follow the windings of that stream the distance is nearly three times as
great. The backwater of the Mississippi finds its way into these
sluggish channels, and renders comparatively useless any levees on the
banks of the great river near their mouths: and from the northern border
of Arkansas to the gulf the old Father of Waters pursues a course as
intricate in its windings as the St. Francis. It is asserted by many
that the mouth of the stream was once perhaps not far below Memphis, and
that all the land to the southward has been produced partly by slow
upheaval of the sea-bottom and partly by the alluvial deposits of the
river and the gradual extension of its delta, which now projects many
miles into the gulf. This would account for the low and swampy character
of the land in the entire region.
The writer has endeavored to give an accurate general view of southern
floods. While differing in some features from floods in other lands,
they themselves are much alike. The description of a flood of to-day
would answer with but little adaptation as a narrative of fifty years
ago: and further details of particular flood scenes are unnecessary.
Such great overflows are not common, the levees holding the river in
check on ordinary occasions. Yet, one flood season deserves more than
passing notice.