“OLD MR MISSISSIPPI.”

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5126, 16 May 1927, Page 2

“OLD MR MISSISSIPPI.”

GETTING HIGHER EVERY YEAR.

POSITION OF NEW ORLEANS

“Oh. there’s nothing interesting in that,” says the New Orleanean booster moodily. “We’ve got old Mr Mississippi pretty well, licked. He gets a little higher every year, but he qan’t hurt us any more. When- he gets high ve keep 1700' men watching him. so he can’t do much. Let’s go down to Antoine’s and get Jules to make us a jambalaya.” “There’s nothing interesting in old Mr Mississippi, we’ve got him pretty well licked.” Also, possibly, there’s nothing interesting in a prominent war, or in a fight to discover the South Pole, or to dlimb Mt. Everest. It all depends on the point of view. Let us, therefore, permit the amiable Orleanean to depart in search of his jambalaya, while we devote a little time to examining into the conduct of that violent, unscrupulous, wicked, herculean, hell-raising, yellow-faced reprobate, old Mississippi. j The Mississippi comes down out of the North, roaring and gurgling and lapping its chops full of mud and logs and snow water and seventeen million different varieties of trash, from every State in its enormous valley; and when HO miles from its mouth it reaches the site that those wise young Canadians, Iberbille and Beinvilie, selected more than 200 years ago as the location for the town of New Orleans, it makes a large and graceful curve and starts back north.

In seasons of drought the river may fall to such an extent that there is genuine land—soggy,, but genuine above the water ; but when the seasons are wet, or even damp, the Mississippi spreads out over the entire delta and there is rejoicing among the ducks and the muskrats. The earliest residents of New Orleans built dikes around the town, so that old Mr Mississippi was kept out of its streets and houses, except when he went on a rampage, which he frequently did. Then, as the land became more populous, levees, were built to keep old Mr Mississippi within his banks —great ramparts of earth extending hundreds of miles along both sides of the river.

For the most part,, the levees were successful—except when old Mr Mississippi took it into his head to be mean and ornery. And to know anything about the meanness and the orneriness and the diabolical strength of the- Mississippi one must have lived hlong the lower reaches of the river and seen its terrific, boiling, growling, ydllow, swollen surface high above the level of the surrounding countryside, gnawing, slobbering and sucking at the pitiful little man-made earthern levees that stand between it and the good dry earth on either side of it; gnawing and slobbering within twelve inches of the ’levee top ; so close sometimes to the top that levee workers pile sandbags along the crest and nervously trust to them to hold back all the waters of the Mississippi Viilley. Some years ago an ocean-going steamer of several thousand tons burden lay at her dock in New Orleans. In an evil moment her cargo shifted .and she rolled over and sank. For a little while she rested on «ui underwater .shelf, so that the tops c.r her masts could be seen. Then old Mr Mississippi,, in a burst of petulance, snatched her off the bank and she vanished. Owners and wrecking companies hunted high and low for that steamer but no trace of her has ever been discovered. Old Mr Mississippi swallowed her up and digested her and went gaily off about his business. Anybody who fails to appreciate the unusual aspects of this feat might try to. find some other body of, wate.i in which a 5000-ton steanfthip can be so enthusiastically sunk that no trace of it can be found. As time went on the warfare tween New Orleans and old Mr. Mississippi became more acrimonious and pestiferous, instead of easier and mellower, as is usually the case- in most long wars. The land along the lower Mississippi is alluvial land, built up in bygone ages by the constant overflowing of the countryside by the river. The river overflowed and distributed a rich layer of silt. On this layer cypress forests sprang into existence, and various rank tropical growths. Consequently, as the land on which New Orleans was built beeame drier it settled farther and farther below the level of the river. At the present time the high-water level of the Mississippi is 21ft. above- the street level of, the city.

This land shrinkage has also resulted in the street level of New Orleans being five feet below the high-water level of Lake Bontchartrain, which is connected with the Gulf of Mexico and is therefore subject to its tides.

The levees, being made of earth, are about as high as they can be made without slumping and collapsing under. their own weight-—K. L. Roberts, in the Saturday Evening Post.