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Floods Of The Mississippi

Floods Of The Mississippi image
Parent Issue
Day
2
Month
July
Year
1897
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Few persons öutside of the country ' irained by the Mississippi have any adequate idea of the horrors of a flood in fc región. ïo produce it, there mast flrst heavy and prolonged rains in .o leading tributarios of the great river. These are fortnnately so wide apart, stretchiiig as they do from the Ohio on the east to the Missouri in the far west, tfaat usually not oftener than twice iu a geiierafiou does the great disaster occur. Conditions leading up to brnken levees in the Mississippi are as follows: First, there come gencrally tremendous rains iu the Ohio valley. Creeks and rivera flowiug into the Ohio river from Fittsburg to its month are swollen and hurry their oontents into the usually sluggish yellow stream. It becomes 'a swift, devouring torreut It rises and lashes its banks in fury. It overflows and its muddy current eats j into riverside homes, whose inhabitants flee for their lives to the hills. Barns, sometimes with bleating calves and sheep inside and chickeus crowing upon their ridgepoles, are whirled down etrearn. Frame houses with the furuiture still within them go by, haystauks and flatboats, cribs with corn glearuing yellow inside, strings of fence paling and saw logs flash past upon the angry stream, to be towed in by wreckers below or to go on out into the unknown upon the Gulf of Mexico. Meaqtime another dcluge of rain has come and soaked and gorged all the earth in the Illiuois, upper Mississippi and Missouri valleys. These rivers carry the great waters southward. They meet and mingle at Cairo. Just at this point the awful rains set in again, this time in the lower Mississippi región. From western Texas, from Missouri, from Louisiaua, from the regions drained by the Sunflower and Yazoo the swollen creeks and rivers pour their contents into the channel of the maddened Father of Waters. The inhabitants of towns along the Mississippi begin to be anxious. Along the Mississifii are 1,300 miles of embankments, built to keep the river out of people's homes and off their plantations. The embankments run southward from Cairo. They are in many places 12 feet high, the people's houses being at CL'.nary high water below the surf ace of the river. As a statement of cold fact it niay be observed that there will be 110 abcolute safety for our population living aloug the lower Mississippi till these frightful inundations shall have scattered sand, earth and sediment over the lowlands sufficient to raise them above the danger line. How long that will require geologists perhaps can calcúlate. But what would you? The lands betiind the Mississippi danger line are as fertile as any this earth affords. flere are the great cotton, sugar and rice plantatious. In the value of its farm products to the acre Louisiana is richer tlian any other state in the Union. And men must live and support their families and toil, rejoice and suffer, and work out their destinies. All eyes, all hearts are fixed alterna tely on the pouring skies and the Mississippi embanknients. Along the shore towns relays of men begin to work uight and day to streugthen the levees. Timbers, loads of earth, stones and sand bags are heaped against one another to keep the' wall of water out. Still it rains, and the dangcr grows. Then no man leaves the levee. All who can dig and shovel work frantically, with pale face and set lipsandfew words. During the pres2nt flood season men at Greenville workid without food or Sleep for more tliau 24 hours. Only those who have seen the result of a crevasse know the desolation it leaves iu its track. Like a cloudburst the waters pour over homes and fertile fields. Tbousauds of domestic animáis are drowned, millions of dollars' worth of crops are destroyed. The river in the neighborhood of these breaks is sometiines 60 miles wide. Where inland villages are upon elevated grouiid wild game loses its fear of man and deer and other animáis, driven by hunger and by terror of the unknown, flee to the habitations of man for refuge, instead of away from them. Iu times like this men are sometimos crazed and lose tbeir humauity in their awful dread of what may happen. The darkest chapter in the history of these Mississippi overflows records that men have traveled a distance of 50 to 100 miles uorthward from their own homes and with fiendish calculation deliberately cut the levees, that the river might overwhelm the people north, so as to save themselves. It would be interesting toknow what would happen if even oue European natioD, say England er France, would courageously announce that she would have nothiug more to do with the iniqnitous blockading of Crete and then quietly withdraw her fleet froni the shameful business of holding back the hands of Christians. What would the other powers do? Would not first one, then anotber, softly sneak out and let Greece and Ttirkey settle their owu affair? ür, if not that, certaiuly there would be a speedy disposition of the qu stiou, with auuexation to Greece in Bome slaape for Crete. In the present congress Massachusetts stands pre-eminent for its millionaire nienibers. There is only one man in the delegation who is not wealthy, :md he t the oiüv Dejnorrai in it

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat