THE Mi!ssispirri. 97 



form new and more direct cbauuels ; and thus it is, that 

 large tracts of country once upou the river, become in- 

 land, or are entirely swept away by the current ; and so 

 frequently does this happen, that " cut-oflfs " are almost 

 as familiar to the eye on the Mississippi, as its muddy 

 waters. 



"When the Mississippi, in making its '' cut-oflfs,'' is 

 ploughing its way through the virgin soil, there float 

 upon the top of this destroying tide, thousands of trees, 

 which but lately covered the land, and lined its caving 

 banks. These gigantic wrecks of the primitive forests 

 are tossed about by the invisible power of the current, 

 as if they were straws; and they find no rest, until with 

 associated thousands they are thrown upon some pro- 

 jecting point of land, where they lie rotting for miles, 

 their dark forms frequently shooting into the air like 

 writhing serpents, presenting one of the most desolate 

 pictures of which the mind can conceive. These masses 

 of timber are called "rafts.'' 



Other trees become attached to the bottomof the river, 

 and yet by some elasticity of the roots are loose enough 

 to be aflfected by the strange and powerful current, which 

 will bear them down under the surface ; and the trees, 

 by their own strength, will come gracefully up again to 

 be again ingulfed ; and thus they continuously wave up- 

 ward and downward, with a gracefulness of motion which 

 would not disgrace a beau of the old school. Boats 

 frequently pass over these " sawyers," as they go down 



