CHAP. XXXL] OLD LEVEES. 191 



was to land next day at Natchez before lie should be 

 up. This conversation lasted but a few minutes, and 

 in as many more I was in a good berth under a 

 musquito net, listening to a huge bell tolling in the 

 fog, to warn every flat-boat to get out of the way, on 

 peril of being sent instantly to the bottom. In spite 

 of this din, and that of the steam funnels and ma 

 chinery, I soon fell asleep for the third time. 



When I came on deck next day, all hands were at 

 work, taking in wood at a landing below Bayou 

 Sara, where I saw on the top of the river bank, now 

 sixteen feet high, several striking memorials of the 

 ravages of former inundations. Besides the newest 

 levee, there was one which had given way previously 

 to the great flood of 1844, and a still older one, which, 

 although once parallel, was now cut off abruptly, and 

 at right angles to the present course of the river. 

 They reminded me of the remnant of an oval en 

 trenchment at the edge of the cliff near Newhaven 

 in Sussex, and of those paths leading directly to the 

 brink of precipices overhanging the sea in many 

 maritime counties in England. Farther on, at 

 another wooding station, in Adams county, Missis 

 sippi, I observed a bank eighteen feet in perpendicu 

 lar height, and said to be forty-five feet high when 

 the water is at its lowest. It was composed of sand, 

 or sandy loam, indicating a comparatively rapid de 

 position. In such loam, no erect stumps and trunks 

 of trees are met with, the sediment having accumu 

 lated on the margin of the river in a few years too 

 fast to allow large trees to grow there. But in 

 other places, where the bank consisted of fine, stiff clay, 



