THE MISSISSIPPI. O7 
form new and more direct channels; and thus it is, that 
large tracts of country once upon the river, become in- 
land, or are entirely swept away by the current; and so 
frequently does this happen, that “ cut-offs” are almost 
as familiar to the eye on the Mississippi, as its muddy 
waters. . 
When the Mississippi, in making its “ cut-offs,” 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 affected 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 
5 
