LEUTZE 



3391 



LEVEL 



plant them into the outdoor field. The older 

 plants send up a- brittle stock filled with a 

 milky, bitter fluid, which bears pale yellow 

 flowers. Though this vegetable is not impor- 

 tant for nutritive qualities, yet when eaten 

 raw with vinegar and oil it gives variety to the 

 meal and improves the flavor of other foods. 



LEUTZE, loit'se, EMANUEL (1816-1868), an 

 American painter, of German parentage, whose 

 work, Washington Crossing the Delaware, a 

 reproduction of which hangs in the Metropoli- 

 tan Museum, New York, is familiar to every 

 American school child. He also painted scenes 

 from the life of Columbus, including Columbus 

 in Chains and Columbus before the Queen. 

 Among his studies from English history is 

 Cromwell and His Daughter, and famous 

 among his numerous paintings depicting scenes 

 from the Revolutionary War are Washington 

 at Monmouth and News from Lexington. His 

 last work was Westward Ho, a mural picture 

 for the staircase of the Capitol at Washing- 

 ton. Another well-known canvas,, Cromwell's 

 Visit to Milton, is exhibited in the Corcoran 

 Gallery, Washington. Leutze was born at 

 Gemiind, Wiirttemberg, and at an early age 

 came with his parents to Philadelphia, where 

 he received his first instruction in art. For a 

 while he lived at Diisseldorf, but settled in 

 New York City in 1859. 



LEVANT ' , originally meaning the East, 

 or the place where the sun rises, is the name 

 specifically applied to the coast region and 

 islands of Asia Minor and Syria. It generally 

 designates the coast of the Mediterranean Sea 

 immediately east of Italy, and sometimes is 

 regarded as extending east to the Euphrates 

 and over the Nile Valley, thus including Greece 

 and Egypt. 



Levant Morocco, a fine quality of leather 

 made from skins of goats raised in the Levant. 

 Nowhere else in the world is there found such 

 fine quality of skins. While levant morocco 

 should designate leather made solely from 

 goatskins of the Levant, it is a common prac- 

 tice now to call all the finer goat leathers by 

 that name. 



LEVEE, lev' e, or levee' a wall or embank- 

 ment built along the banks of a river to keep 

 it from flooding the surrounding country dur- 

 ing seasons of high water; the name is from 

 the French word lever, meaning to raise. In 

 the United States the term is applied spe- 

 cifically to the walls along the lower end of the 

 Mississippi River in the flood districts. The 

 first, which were but three feet in height, were 



begun in 1718 at New Orleans to keep the river 

 from overflowing a strip of fertile land along 

 its course, and the work on them progressed 

 slowly but steadily. However, the seven states 

 along the "Father 

 of Waters" below 

 its junction with 

 the Ohio soon 

 realized that the 

 undertaking was 

 too expensive for 

 them, and in 1882, 

 the year of a 

 great Mississippi 

 flood, the govern- 

 ment set aside 

 $1,300,000 for the 

 improvement of 

 the . river, and 

 part of this 

 amount was used 

 for work on the 

 levees. Between 

 that time and 

 1903 the govern- 

 ment gave about 

 $18,000,000 f o r 

 their construction, 

 but it cost the 

 states in the levee 

 districts over $40,- 

 000,000, most of 

 which was raised I 

 by local and state 

 taxation. MISSISSIPPI LEVEE 



The earth em- DISTRICTS 



bankments are The shaded areas show the 

 . 20,000,000 acres which are 



usually fifteen protected by levees built along 



feet high, the the banks of the great river ' 

 tops eight feet wide, and the sides slope to 

 a width of thirty feet at the base. At the 

 present time (1917) there are 1,490 miles of 

 levees extending along the Mississippi, but 

 these are still insufficient fully to control the 

 overflow. The Southern river states feel that 

 since the waters which do so much damage are 

 drained from all parts of the central United 

 States, the national government should bear 

 the expense of constructing proper flood pro- 

 tection. See MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 



Consult Humphrey's Floods and Levees of the 

 Mississippi River. 



LEVEL, an instrument made use of to 

 prove horizontals, used principally by carpen- 

 ters, masons and other builders, and by sur- 

 veyors. The spirit level, the most accurate, 



