CHAP. XXX.] CREVASSES AND INUNDATIONS. 169 



from destruction. When we consider how many 

 hair-breadth escapes these flat boats have experi 

 enced, how often they have been nearly run down 

 in the night, or even in the day, during dense fogs, 

 and sent to the bottom by collision with a huge 

 steamer, it is strange to reflect, that at length, when 

 their owners have caught sight of the towers of 

 New Orleans in the distance, they should be hurried 

 into a wilderness, and perish there. 



I was shown the entrance of what is called the 

 Carthage crevasse, formed in May, 1840, and open 

 for eight weeks, during which time, it attained a 

 breadth of eighty feet. Its waters were discharged 

 into Lake Pontchartrain, when nothing was visible 

 between that great lagoon and the Mississippi but 

 the tops of tall cypress trees growing in the morass, 

 and a long, narrow, black stripe of earth, being the 

 top of the levee, which marked the course of the 

 river. 



The reader may naturally ask why the Mississippi, 

 when it has once burst through its bank, and taken 

 this shorter cut to the sea, does not continue in 

 the same course, reaching the salt water in a few 

 miles instead of flowing two hundred miles before it 

 empties itself into the Gulf. I may remark in re 

 ply, that the great river does not run, as might be 

 inferred from the description of some of the old 

 geographers, on the top of a ridge in a level plain, 

 but in a valley from one hundred to two hundred 

 and fifty feet deep. 



Thus a b c may represent the cavity in which the 

 river flows, the artificial levees at the top of the banks 



VOL. II. I 



