THE MISSISSIPPI. 101 
swallowed up by the Mississippi, as if it possessed 
within itself the very capacity of the ocean, and dis- 
dained in its comprehensive limits, to acknowledge the 
accession of strength. 
The color of this tremendous flood of water is always 
turbid. There seems no rest for it, that will enable it 
to become quiet or clear. In all seasons the same 
muddy water meets the eye; and this strange pecu- 
liarity suggests to the mind that the banks of the river 
itself are composed of this dark sediment which has in 
the course of centuries confined the onward flood within 
its present channel, and in this order of nature we find 
one of the most original features of the river; for on 
the Mississippi we have no land sloping in gentle de- 
clivities to the water’s edge, but a bank just high 
enough, where it is washed by the river, to protect the 
back country from inundation, in the ordinary rises of 
the stream; for whenever, from an extensive flood, it 
rises above the top of this feeble barrier, the water runs 
down into the country. 
This singular fact shows how all the land on the 
Mississippi south of the thirty-fourth degrce of latitude, 
is liable to inundation, since nearly all the inhabitants 
on the shores of the river, find its level, in ordinarily 
high water, running above the land on which they re- 
side. To prevent this easy, and apparently natural in- 
undation, there seems to be.a power constantly exerted 
to hold the flood in check, and bid it “go so far and no 
