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Ch. XIX.] 



ALLUVIAL PLAIN. 



443 



river by a continuous mud-bank covered with wood. The 

 old bend then becomes a semicircular lake of clear water, 

 inhabited by large gar-fish (Lepiclostei), alligators, and 

 wild fowl, which the steam-boats have nearly driven away 

 from the main river. A multitude of such crescent-shaped 

 lakes, scattered far and wide over the alluvial plain, the 

 creater number of them to the west, but some of them also 



testimony 



r^ 



mer 



r 



miles 



For the last 

 4 the river is 



much less winding than above, there being only in the whole 

 of that distance one great curve, that called the ' English 

 Turn. 5 This greater straightness of the stream is ascribed 

 by Mr. Forshey to the superior tenacity of the banks, which 

 are more clayey in this region. 



The Mississippi has been incorrectly described by some of 

 the earlier geographers, as a river running along the top of 

 a long hill, cr 



moun 



I in a plain. In reality it runs in a 

 100 to 200 or more feet in depth, as a, c, &, 

 fig. 31, its banks forming long strips of land parallel to the 



0X11 



Fig. 31. 



a 



JLJ£J^L 



(j ffi ffi-i^L-f 



Section of channel, bank, levees (a and b), and swamps of Mississippi River, 



- 



course of the main stream, and to the swamps g, f, and d, e, 

 lying on each side. These extensive morasses, which are 

 commonly well-wooded, though often submerged for months 

 continuously, are rarely more than fifteen feet below the 

 summit level of the banks. The banks themselves are oc- 

 casionally overflowed, but are usually above water for a 

 breadth of about two miles. They follow all the curves of 

 the great river, and near New Orleans are raised artificially 

 by embankments (or levees), of which sections are seen at a 



and b, fig. 31, through which the river when swollen 

 times cuts a deep channel 



some- 

 (or crevasse), inundating the 



