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 Caesar'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.