AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 



n 



Vessel and perforate her bow, no further mischief accrues, 

 than the mere filling of this snag chamber with water. 



The prodigious quantity of wood annually drifted down 

 by the Mississippi and its tributaries, is a subject of geo- 

 logical interest, not merely as illustrating the manner in 

 which abundance of vegetable matter becomes, in the ordi- 

 narj' course of Nature, imbedded in submarine and estu- 

 ary deposits, but as attesting the constant destruction of 

 soil and transportation of matter to lower levels, by the 

 tendency of rivers to shift their courses. Each of these 

 trees must have required many years, some of them many 

 centuries, to attain their full size; the soil, therefore, 

 whereon they grew, after remaining undisturbed for long 

 periods, is ultimately torn up and swept away. Yet not- 

 withstanding this incessant destruction of land and uproot- 

 ing of trees, the region which yields this never-failing 

 supply of drift wood is densely clothed with noble forests, 

 and is almost unrivalled in its power of supporting animal 

 and vegetable life. 



Innumerable herds of wild deer and bisons feed on the 

 luxuriant pastures of the plains. The jaguar, the wolf, and 

 the fox, are amongst the beasts of prey. The waters teem 

 with alligators and tortoises, and their surface is covered 

 with millions of migratory water-fowl, which perform their 

 annual voyage between the Canadian lakes and the shores 

 of the Mexican gulf. The power of man begins to be 

 sensibly felt, and the wilderness to be replaced by towns, 

 orchards, and gardens. The gilded steam-boat, like a 

 moving city, now stems the current with a steady pace — 

 now shoots rapidly down the descending stream through 

 the solitudes of the forests and prairies. Already does the 

 flourishing population of the great valley exceed that of the 

 thirteen United States when first they declared their inde- 

 pendence, and after a sanguinary struggle were severed 

 from the parent country.* Such is the state of a continent 

 where rocks and trees are hurried annually, by a thousand 

 torrents, from the mountains to the plains, and where sand 

 and finer matter are swept down by a vast current to the 

 sea, together with the wreck of countless forests and the 

 bones of animals which perish in the inundations. When 

 these materials reach the Gulf, they do not render the 

 waters unfit for aquatic animals; but, on the contrary, the 

 ocean here swarms with life, as it generally does where 

 the influx of a great river furnishes a copious supply of 

 organic and mineral matter. Yet many geologists, when 

 they behold the spoils of the land heaped in successive 

 strata, and blended confusedly with the remains of fishes, 

 or interspersed with broken shells and corals, imagine that 

 they are viewing the signs of a turbulent, instead of a tran- 



* Flint's Geography, vol. I. 



quil and settled state of the planet. Tliey read in such 

 phenomena the proof of chaotic disorder, and reiterated 

 catastrophes, instead of indications of a surface as habitable 

 as the most delicious and fertile districts now tenanted by 

 man. They are not content with disregarding the analogy 

 of the present course of Nature, when they speculate on 

 the revolutions of past times, but they often draw conclu- 

 sions concerning the former state of things directly the 

 reverse of those to which a fair induction of facts would 

 infallibly lead them. 



There is another striking feature in the basin of the Mis- 

 sissippi, illustrative of the changes now in progress, which 

 we must not omit to mention — the formation by natural 

 causes of great lakes, and the drainage of others. These 

 are especially frequent in the basin of the Red River in 

 Louisiana, where the largest of them, called Bistineau, is 

 more than thirty miles long, and has a medium depth of 

 from fifteen to twenty feet. In the deepest parts are seen 

 numerous cypress-trees, of all sizes, now dead, and most 

 of them with their tops broken by the wind, yet standing 

 erect under water. This tree resists the action of air 

 and water longer than any other, and, if not submerged 

 throughout the whole year, will retain life for an extraor- 

 dinary period.* Lake Bistineau, as well as Black Lake, 

 Cado Lake, Sjjanish Lake, Natchitoches Lake, and many 

 others, have been formed, according to Darby, by the 

 gradual elevation of the bed of Red River, in which the 

 alluvial communications have been so great as to raise its 

 channel, and cause its waters, during the flood season, to 

 flow up the mouths of many tributaries, and to convert 

 parts of their courses into lakes. In the autumn, when 

 the level of Red River is again depressed, the waters rush 

 back again, and some lakes become grassy meadows, with 

 streams meandering through them.t Thus, there is a 

 periodical flux and reflux between Red River and some 

 of these basins; which are merely reservoirs, alternately 

 emptied and filled like our tide estuaries — with this difier- 

 ence, that in the one case the land is submerged for 

 several months continuously, and, in the other, twice in 

 every twenty-four hours. It has happened, in several cases, 

 that a bar has been thrown by Red River across some 

 of the openings of these channels, and then the lakes 

 become, like Bistineau, constant repositories of water. 

 But even in these cases, their level is liable to annual 

 elevation and depression, because the flood, when at its 

 height, passes over the bar; just as, where sand-hills close 



* Captains Clark and Lewis found a forest of pines standing erect under 

 water in the body of the Columbia River in North Amenca, which they sup^ 

 posed, from the appearance of the trees, to have been only submerged about 

 twenty years. — Vol. ii. p. 241. 



t Darby's Louisiana, p. 33. 



