THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.1

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.¹

By JACQUES W. REDWAY.

INTRODUCTION.

The purport of the following paper is to show that corrosion of its banks and deposition of sediment constitute the legitimate business of a river. If the bed of the Mississippi were of adamant, and its drainage slopes were armored with chilled steel, its current would do just what it has been doing in past ages—wear them away, and fill the Gulf of Mexico with the detritus.

Many thoughts were suggested by Mr. S.C. Clemens, erstwhile a Mississippi pilot, and by Mr. D.A. Curtis. Both of these gentlemen know the river.

GENERAL GEOGRAPHY.

The Mississippi River, as ordinarily regarded, has its head waters in a chain of lakes situated mainly in Beltrami and Cass counties, Minnesota. The lake most distant from the north is Elk Lake, so named in the official surveys of the U.S. Land Office. A short stream flows from Elk Lake to Lake Itaska, a beautiful sheet of water, considerably larger than Elk Lake. From Lake Itaska it flows in a general northeasterly direction, receiving the waters of innumerable springs and ponds, among them Lake Bemidji, a body of water equal in size to Lake Itaska. After a course of 135 miles the steam flows into Cass Lake, absorbing in the meantime the waters of another chain of lakes, discharged through Turtle River. From Cass Lake the waters flow a distance of twenty miles, and are poured into Lake Winnibigoshish. The latter has an area of eighty square miles; it is twice the size of Cass Lake and more than six times that of Lake Itaska. From Lake Winnibigoshish to the point where it receives the discharge of Leech Lake, the river flows through an open savannah, from a quarter of a mile to a mile in width. Forty miles beyond are Pokegama Falls. Here the river flows from Pokegama Lake, falling about fourteen feet before quiet water is reached. All the country about the headwaters is densely wooded with Norway pine on the higher ground, and with birch, maple, poplar and tamarack on the lower ground. Between Pokegama Falls and the Falls of St. Anthony, the river receives the waters of a number of other similar streams, all flowing from the lake region.

At St. Paul the navigable stage of the river practically begins, although there is more or less navigable water above the falls at certain seasons. From St. Paul to Cairo the river flows between bluffs, the terraces of Champlain times, from ten to fifty miles apart. Between the bluffs are the bottom lands, often coincident with the flood plain, along which the river channel wanders in a devious course of 1,100 miles. The soil of the bottom lands is, of course, alluvial, and was deposited by the river during past ages; that beyond the bluffs is a part of the great intermontane plain, and is sedentary—that is, it has not been materially disturbed since the plain was raised above the sea level by the uplift of the continent.

From Cairo, at the junction of the Ohio River, the plain to the southward is nearly all made land, and in a few spots only does the river touch soil which it has not itself made. Here the Lower Mississippi proper begins, and here, at some not far distant time in the past,² was the head of the Gulf of Mexico. A fuller description of the Lower Mississippi is unnecessary here, inasmuch as the following pages are mainly devoted to this part alone.

HISTORICAL.

Nearly three and a half centuries have elapsed since De Soto, that prince among explorers, traversed the broad prairies that lie between the border highlands of the Western continent, and beheld the stream which watered the future empire of the world. His chroniclers tell us that he was raised to an upright position, so that he could catch a fleeting glimpse of the restless, turbulent flood; for even then the hand of death was upon him, and soon its waters were to enshroud his mortal remains. "His soldiers," says Bancroft, "pronounced his eulogy by grieving for their loss, and the priests chanted over his body the first requiems ever heard on the Mississippi. To conceal his death, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and, in the stillness of midnight, was silently sunk in the middle of the stream." Just across the river the Arkansas was pouring in its tumultuous flood, and its confluence was the site of the future town of Napoleon, which in coming years was to be historic ground.

Worn by suffering, hardships and peril, and racked by the pestilential fever that still hovers about the river lowlands, De Soto paid the debt of nature, and his thrice decimated followers made their way back to France. It seemed a strange, incredible story that they told, for such a mighty river, with its vast plain, was beyond conception. Its source, they said, was in the north—among the eternal snows—farther than it had ever been given to man to penetrate. Its waters, they thought, were poured into the Gulf of California, or perhaps into the great Virginia Sea. Its flood, they said, was so great that if all the rivers of Europe were gathered into one channel, they would not be a tithe as large. But the people who heard these wonderful accounts were unconcerned. The French monarch knew naught but to debauch his heritance; the French courtier intrigued and plundered; the French peasant, dogged and sullen in his long suffering, dragged out his miserable existence. The flood of waters rolled on, and a hundred and thirty years must come and go before the next white man should see the sheen of its rippling.

Let us cast a retrograde glance to the history of this period. It was only fifty years before that Columbus had dropped anchor off the coral reef of Samana Cay, and thrilled the Old World by announcing the discovery of the New. Elizabeth, the virgin Queen of England, was a proud, haughty girl just entering her teens, all unmindful of her eventful future. Mary Queen of the Scots was a tiny infant in swaddling clothes. The labors of Rafael Sanzio were still fresh in the memory of his surviving pupils. Michael Angelo was in the zenith of his fame, bending his energies to the beautifying of the great cathedral. Martin Luther was in the sere old age of his life, waiting for the command of the Master, which should bid him lay down his armor. A hundred years were to elapse before Charles I. of England must pay with his life the price of his folly.

Joliet, a French trader, was a man possessed of far more brains than marked the average men of his times. He had not only the indomitable courage which is essential to the successful explorer, but he had also the rare ability to manage men; and we find him in 1672 with a commission from the French king directing him to explore the valley which was to be a part of New France. The lands which he visited must be his fee to the king; certain rights of trade he wisely secured to himself. So, with Pere Marquette, a Jesuit priest, he undertook the mission, which we may doubt whether to call a journey of discovery or an errand of diplomacy. Crossing the ocean, their route lay along the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes; through the Great Lakes to the country of the Illini; down the Illinois to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to its junction with the Arkansas. Here they encamped near the site of Napoleon. Everywhere along their route they had won the hearts of the savage Illini. They possessed that rare tact which was born in French travelers, and which no English explorer ever had. When they had reached the junction of the Arkansas, "they were kindly received by the Indian tribes." They held a council with the various chiefs, with whom they made a treaty. The treaty was celebrated by a feast, and, if we may believe the record thereof, libations of wine were freely poured forth to pledge the stipulations of the business transaction. For a heavenly possession in the uncertain future, the Indian acknowledged, by the cross raised in commemoration, that he had bartered away his earthly kingdom. The title by which the Indian held the soil wrested from the Mound-builder may not have been perfect; that of the wily Joliet may have been equally defective. But Joliet builded more wisely than he knew, for to this day, fraud, treachery and broken faith are the chief witnesses to our treaties with the aboriginal owners of the land.

Nine years after the business venture of Joliet, La Salle received letters extraordinary from the King of France, directing him to make additional explorations along the course of the great river. He organized an expedition, crossed the ocean, and made his way rapidly to the scene of his explorations. Preparing his canoes and launches, he followed the sinuous course of the river to Napoleon. His arrival was celebrated by another feast and post-prandial business agreement, and New France began its brief existence. Never in the history of the world had such an empire been founded—such another could not be formed until the domains of this had been widened from sea to sea, and the energy of Saxon, Teuton and Kelt mingled to build a greater.

To La Salle belongs the honor of tracing the true course of the Mississippi river. He charted it with a faithfulness and accuracy that would do credit to the surveys of the present day. He seemed to have noted all the important feeders and tributaries, correctly locating their points of confluence. He did not cease his work until he reached the Gulf of Mexico.³ So not only was La Salle the most indefatigable explorer of this region, but he also earned the credit of having made the most important discovery.

With La Salle's exploration the future importance of the Mississippi began; and though the railway has of late years largely supplanted it as a commercial highway, yet, with the possible exception of the Ganges, no other river in the world transports yearly a greater tonnage of merchandise. The early traders were content to carry their supplies back and forth in canoes. As settlement and business increased, the canoe gave place to the raft, and the raft yielded to the flatboat. In the course of time, steam was applied to the propulsion of boats, and the flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when the civil war cast its blight over the land; and when the years of strife were over, so also was the river traffic which had created the floating palaces of the Mississippi. There were several things that operated to prevent the reorganization of the fleet of steamboats which for size, beauty and capacity were found in no other part of the world. Many of these boats had been destroyed, and the companies that owned them were financially ruined. Most of those remaining were purchased or confiscated for military purposes, and rebuilt either as transports or as gunboats. A period of unparalleled railway construction began at the close of the war, and most of the traffic was turned to the railway. Finally, it was discovered that a puffy, wheezy tug, with its train of barges, costing but a few thousand dollars, and equipped with half a score of men, could, at a much less rate, tow a vastly greater cargo than the river steamer. That discovery was the knell of the old-time steamboat, and the beginning of a new era of navigation. Powerful as the railway may be, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a tug and train of barges will carry a cargo of merchandise from St. Paul to St. Louis for one-tenth the sum the consignee must pay for railway transportation. So, to-day, the river is just as important as a highway of commerce as it was in the palmy days of the floating palace and river greyhound. Railway traffic has enormously increased, but river traffic along the most wonderful of streams has not materially lessened.

The Mississippi is certainly a wonderful river. From Elk Lake to the Gulf of Mexico it has a variable length of about 2,800 miles; from Pass à l'Outre to the head of the Missouri its extent is nearly 4,200 miles—a length not equaled by any other river in the world. It is evident, by a moment of reflection, that a river which traverses a great extent of latitude offers much greater facilities for commerce and settlement than a longitudinal river. The Mississippi traverses a greater breadth of latitude than any other river, except the Nile, for its sources are in regions of almost arctic cold, while its delta is in a land that is practically tropical. The volume of its flood is surpassed by the Amazon and, perhaps, the Yukon. It discharges, however, three times as much water as the Danube, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and almost three hundred and fifty times as much as the Thames. It has several hundred navigable tributaries, and its navigable waters, stretched in a straight line, would reach nearly three-fourths the distance around the earth. It is one of the most sinuous of rivers. In one part of its course it flows in a channel nearly 1,400 miles long to accomplish, as the crow flies, the distance of 700 miles. In more than one place the current forms a loop ten, twenty and even thirty miles around, rather than to cut through a neck perhaps not half a mile in width. It is one of the most capricious of rivers, for its channel rarely lies in the same place during two successive seasons. The river manifests a strong inclination to move east; and were La Salle to repeat his memorable voyage, he would touch in scarcely half a score of places the course he formerly traveled; or if he were to go over exactly the same course, he must of necessity have his boats dragged over the ground, for almost the entire course over which he traveled is now dry land. Since that time the river has deserted almost all of its former channel, as if to repudiate its connection with the after-dinner treaties of two hundred years lang syne; in places its channel lies to the west, but for the greater extent it is to the eastward.⁴

PHYSICAL.

The lower Mississippi is among the muddiest streams in the world. During the average year it brings down 7,500,000,000 cubic yards of sediment, discharging it along the lower course, or pushing it into the Gulf. As one thinks of the small amount of sediment held in a gallon or two of river water, a comprehension of this vast amount of silt is impossible. It is enough to cover a square mile in area to a depth of 268 feet. In five hundred years it would build above the sea level a State as large and as high as Rhode Island. Thus, by means of this sediment, the river has pushed its mouths fifty miles into the sea, confining its flow within narrow strips of land—natural levees made by the river itself.

The Mississippi is notable for its varying length. Within the memory of the oldest pilot the length of the river between St. Louis and New Orleans has varied more than one hundred and fifty miles, being sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, as the year may be one of drought or of excessive rainfall. Occasionally the river will shorten itself a score of miles at a single leap. The shortening invariably takes place at one of its long sinuous curves for which it is so remarkable. At a season when the volume of water begins to increase, the narrow neck of the loop gives way little by little under the continuous impact of the strengthening current. Narrower and narrower it grows as the water ceaselessly cuts away the bank. Finally the barrier is broken; there is a tumultuous meeting of waters; the next steamboat that comes along goes through a new cut; and a moat or ox-bow lake is the only reminder of the former channel.⁵

In 1863 the city of Vicksburg was situated on the outer curve of such a loop. At that time General Grant and his army were on the opposite side of the river, and the whole power of the Federal government was directed upon devising how the army might cross it and capture the long-beleagured city. So an army engineer conceived the idea of turning the river around the rear of the army. Accordingly, a canal was cut across the loop, in order to make an artificial channel through which its current might run. But the river steadfastly refused to accept any channel it had not itself made, and the ditch soon silted up. Twelve years or more afterward there was trouble; for the river, which had all this time so persistently ignored the canal, one stormy night, when its current was considerably swollen, took a notion to adopt the canal that it had so long refused. Next morning the good people of Vicksburg woke to find their metropolis, not on the river channel, but practically an inland town overlooking a stagnant mud flat. The town of Delta, which, the night before, was three miles below Vicksburg, was, in the morning, two miles above it. Since that time, energy and intelligence have conspired in its behalf, and Vicksburg is still an important river port; but the channel of the river is persistent, and constant effort and watchfulness alone keep a depth of water sufficient for the needs of navigation before the wharves.

The average inhabitant of the flood plain of the Mississippi is not surprised at this capriciousness of the river, for long experience has taught him to look for it. During seasons of mean or of low water, there is little or no trouble; but when floods begin to swell the current, then it is high time to be on the alert, for no one knows what a day or even an hour may bring forth. Perhaps a snag, loosened from the bank above, may come floating down the stream. It strikes a shallow place somewhere in the river, and thereupon anchors in mid-channel. Directly it does, a small riffle or bar of silt will form around it, and this, in turn, sends an eddying current over against the bank. By and by the latter begins to be chipped away, little by little. Perhaps the corrosion of the bank might not be noticed except by a bottom land planter or a riverman. But there is no time to be lost. If some unfortunate individual happens to possess belongings in that vicinity, he simply lays aside his coat and works as if he were a whole legion doing Cæsar's bidding; he well knows that in a very few hours the river will be swallowing up his real estate at the rate of half an acre to the mouthful. It is certainly hard to see one's earthly possessions disappear before the angry flood of the river, but the bottom land planter does not complain, because the experience of generations has taught him that he must expect it. A queer fortune befell Island No. 74.

Between the States of Arkansas and Mississippi there is a large island, which, for want of a name, is commonly known as Island No. 74.⁶ This slip of insular land is probably the only territory within the United States and not of it, for this island is without the boundaries of either State, county or township. It is not under control of the government, because it is in the possession of an owner whose claim is acknowledged by the government. The anomalous position of the island as to political situation is due to the erosion of the river as an active and the defects of statutory law as a passive agent. According to the enactment whereby the States of Arkansas and Mississippi were created, the river boundary of the former extends to mid-stream; that of the latter to mid-channel. Herein is the difficulty. A dissipated freshet turned the current against the Mississippi bank, and shifted the former position of mid-channel many rods to the eastward, so that the fortunate or unfortunate owner found his possessions lying beyond both the mid-river point of Arkansas and the mid-channel line of Mississippi. The owner of the plantation may be unhappy at time of election, for he is practically a non-resident of any political division. His grief, however, is somewhat assuaged when the tax gatherer calls, for, being outside of all political boundaries, he has no taxes to pay.

Within a few years the town of Napoleon, which has already been mentioned as the site which beheld the cross erected by Marquette and the seizure of La Salle, was the scene of still another chapter in history. Almost two hundred years from the time when Joliet and Marquette beheld the historic ground, the river turned its current against the banks, and in a few hours the crumbling walls of an old stone building, half a mile or more from the river banks, were the surviving monument that marked the former location of the town.

The Mississippi is indeed a grand study, and the people who have lived in its valley during past ages have seen the river doing just what it is doing to-day; and as race has succeeded race, each in turn has seen the landmarks of its predecessors swept away by its angry flood and buried beneath its sediment. Ever since the crests of the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains were thrust up above the sea, the river has been wearing them away, and bearing the scourings to the vast plain below. In the time of its building it has made the greatest and the richest valley on the face of the earth; next to that of the Amazon it is the largest, covering an area of one and one-quarter million square miles. The river and its tributaries drain twenty-eight States and Territories—an area equal to that of all Europe except Russia. This basin includes half the area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska. It is five times as large as Austria-Hungary, six times the size of France or Germany, nine times the area of Spain, and ten times that of the British Isles. Measured by its grain-producing capacity, this valley is capable of supporting a larger population than any other physical region on the face of the earth. Already it is the foremost region in the world in the production of grain, meat and cotton. The rich soil, sedentary on the prairie and alluvial in the bottomlands, is almost inexhaustible in its nutritious qualities. The soil cannot be "worn out" in the bottomlands, for nature restores its vitality by bringing fresh supplies from the highlands as fast or faster than the seed crop exhausts it. Sixty bushels of wheat or two bales of cotton may be harvested from an acre of bottom lands. So vast in proportions is the yearly crop of food stuffs that more than three hundred thousand freight cars and about two thousand vessels are required to move the crop from farm to market. One hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of railway, fifteen thousand miles of navigable water, exclusive of the Great Lakes, and several thousand miles of canals are insufficient to transport this enormous production; thousands of miles of railway are therefore yearly built in order to keep pace with the growth of population and the settlement of new lands. To the natural resources of the soil add the enormous mineral wealth hidden but a few feet below the surface, and wonder grows to amazement. Coal fields surpassing in extent all the remaining fields in the world; iron ore sufficient to stock the world with iron and steel for the next thousand years; copper of the finest quality; zinc, lead, salt, building stone and timber, all in quantities sufficient for a population a hundred times as great. Is it strange that wise economists point to this territory and say, "Behold the future empire of the world"? Where in the wide world is another valley in which climate, latitude and nature have been so liberal?

It is only a few years since the Indian and the bison divided between them the sole possession of this region. What a change hath the hand of destiny wrought! What a revelation, had some unseen hand lifted the curtain that separated the past from the future! Iron, steam and electricity have in them more of mysterious power than ever oriental fancy accredited to the genii of the lamp, and the future of the basin of the Mississippi will be a greater wonder than the past.

The feast of La Salle was the death warrant of the Indian, and the Aryan has crowded out the Indian, just as the latter evicted the mound builder—just as the mound builder overcame the people whose monuments of burned brick and cut stone now lie fifty feet below the surface. Only a few centuries have gone by since these happenings; can we number the years hence when rapacious hordes from another land shall drive out the effete descendants of the now sturdy Aryan?

(To be continued.)

[1]

Read May 17, 1890, before the Engineers' Club of Philadelphia.

[2]

Estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 years. Such estimates, however, are but little better than guesses.

[3]

From the best information I can gather I am unable to decide to my own satisfaction whether or not La Salle discovered the Red River. It is not improbable that he never saw this stream, for it is more than likely that at that time, Red River poured its waters directly into the Gulf of Mexico, through Atchafalaya and Cocoudrie Bayous. That these were formerly a part of the channel of Red River, there can be no doubt. The sluggish swale that now leads from the river to the Gulf is a silted channel that was formerly large enough to carry the whole volume of Red River. Such changes in the channel of a river, when the latter flows through "made" soil, are by no means infrequent. It is only a few years since the Hoang River, "the sorrow of Han," broke through its restraining banks, and poured its flood into the Gulf of Pe-chee-lee, 350 miles distant from its former mouth.]

[4]

"The bed of the river is so broad that the channel meanders from side to side within the bed, just as the bed itself meanders from bluff to bluff; and, as by erosions and deposits, the river, in long periods of time, traverses the valley, so the channel traverses the bed from bank to bank, justifying the remark often heard, that 'not a square rod of the bed could be pointed out that had not, at some time, been covered by the track of steamboats.'"—J.H. SIMPSON, Col. Eng., Brevet Brig.-Gen., U.S.A.

[5]

One of the most noteworthy examples of these cut-offs is Davis'. This cut-off occurred at Palmyra Bend, eighteen miles below Vicksburg. The mid-channel distance around the bend was not far from twenty miles; the neck was only twelve hundred feet across. The fall of the river, measured around the bend, was about four inches per mile; the slope, measured across the neck, was about five and one-half feet, nearly twenty feet per mile. Inasmuch as the soil in the neck was wholly alluvial, the current cut its new channel with exceedingly great rapidity, soon clearing it out a mile in width and more than one hundred feet in depth. The water rushed through the channel with such a velocity that steamboats could not breast its flow for many weeks, while the roaring of its flood could be heard many miles away. The influence of the cut-off was felt both above and below Vicksburg for several years after. The rate of erosion has been perceptibly increased above Vicksburg: and it is not unlikely that the cut-off which occurred a few years later at Commerce, about thirty miles below Memphis, was a result of Davis' Cut. Other recent cut-offs have occurred near Arkansas City, below Greenville, near Duncansby, below Lake Providence at Vicksburg, and at Kienstra. The latter place is below Natchez; all the others are between Natchez and Memphis. A double cut-off is strongly threatened at Greenville.

[6]

For convenience to navigation, the islands in the lower Mississippi, beginning at St. Louis, are numbered. Many of them, however, have local names by which they are frequently known.