and the Mudlumps of the Mississippi. 357 



Sir Charles Lyell remarks (Principles of Geology, 10th ed., 

 p. 448), that the phenomenon of the mudlumps is without par- 

 allel, so far as known, in the delta of any other river. The 

 same remark might, I think, appply to two other peculiarities, 

 viz: the protrusion of the long neck of land into the Gulf; 

 and the fact that, after failing to send out any branch of impor- 

 tance for a hundred miles the great river suddenly divides at 

 one point into three widely divergent branches, the middle one 

 of which (the South Pass), forming the direct continuation of 

 the channel, is the smallest, and has long ceased to be navigable. 

 Evidently, a strong extraneous obstacle alone could turn aside 

 the powerful current, and permanently resist its erosive and un- 

 dermining action. And now, the channel which carries the 

 main current (the Southwest Pass), faithful to the old tradition, 

 IS rapidly pushing out into the Gulf its narrow bands, of reedy 

 marsh, without a branch of any consequence in ten miles from 

 the head of the Passes to the light-house. 



A glance at the coast lines, as well as at the intricate ramifica- 

 tions characterizing the deltas of the Ehine, the Po, the Danube, 

 the Ganges, or the Hoaug-Ho ; or the broad inlets forming the 

 mouths of the rivers of South America, will show the unique- 

 ness of the Mississippi mouths ; the Nile and the Lena alone 

 exhibiting a general form at all analogous, yet very distinct in 

 detaa ^^For the islands off the Lena mouths are not "mud- 

 mmps ;" and the tongue of land separating Lake Menzaleh from 

 the Damietta branch of the Nile, is a mere sand-bar, exhibiting 

 no analogy save that of form, with the remarkable "necks" of 

 the Mississippi Passes. 

 . It would be fair to infer, a priori, '^ 



"y uie Mississippi mouths ; not only at the present time, but for 

 ^any ages past ; perhaps ever since the broad flood of the Terrace 

 ^P^^ subsided into the present Mississippi. 



ihe characteristic features of the mudlumps have successively 

 ^een described and discussed by Sidell,* Forshey,t Chase, 

 Beauregard and Latimer4 Thomassyg and Lyell.|| Yet as the 

 Phenomena are nowhere described in their entirety, I will here, 

 as briefly as possible, recapitulate the important points. 



tfe**^ ^^ ^^P*- Talcott, 1839, in Humphreys and Abbott's Report, App. A. 



t MS. Report, 1850. 

 J,f W of the Board of Engineers J 

 gress Doc. 1852-53 ^ 



