32 PRACTICHL ARBORICULTURE 
waters, the former from the Cumberland mountains in Tennessee, the latter 
bringing the drainage even from Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia 
aad Mississippi, twice crossing the state of Tennessee, and both rivers pouring 
their floods into the Ohio within a few miles of each other. 
The Wabash and \White rivers covered the land between them, forming a 
vast sheet of water underneath which lay hundreds of fine farms. 
With all the unwelcome pouring of many rivers emptying into the already 
swollen Mississippi, that river widened its banks and flooded out over Ar- 
kausas, forming a river forty miles wide. Through the forests and over the 
fields the steamboats plied on errands of mercy, as a general outpouring of 
money and provisions from thousands of generous-hearted citizens sent con- 
tributions in vast quantities to those in distress, for thousands were homeless, 
having lost everything by the breaking of the levees and continued rise of the 
waters. 
The lower Mississippi Valley, from the junction with the Ohio to the delta, 
is a low, alluvial plain of varying width, the hills approaching the river in but 
few places. At Columbus, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., Vicksburg and Natchez. 
Miss., and Baton Rouge, La., are high lands for a very short distance. Except 
these the broad low lands have been formed from the sediment eroded from 
mountain, valley and plain many hundreds of miles away. 
Upon each recurring season of high water the river has spread over the 
low lands, depositing a layer of mud near the banks, thus raising the river and 
its embankment higher and higher each year, until now, during full tide, the sur- 
face is many feet above that of the land. 
In order to prevent this cnnual overflow and enable the planters to occupy 
the rich lands bordering the river, embankments or levees have been con- 
structed at great expense along both sides of the Mississippi and also along 
all streams throughout these low lands. There are few rivers flowing into 
the Mississippi in its lower course, but there are numerous bavous, tortuous in 
their passage, which convey the water through swamps. finally reaching the Gulf 
of Mexico. 
When the river rises in its highest stage the levees become soit and yield- 
ing and frequently a crevasse occurs under the enormous weight of water, 
submerging thousands of acres. 
This relieves the strain from the levees elsewhere and usually lowers 
the water enough to prevent similar losses farther down the river. 
In 1897 there were 15,800 square miles of this alluvial plain beneath the sea 
of waters: 380,000 people were residents of the flooded area: 30,500 farms were 
submerged, with 3,800,000 acres of farm land. 
By a systematic re-afforestation of the mountain regions and the planting 
of trees on the plains at headwaters of these western rivers, and the construc- 
tion of extensive storage reservoirs to supply water for irrigation, a recurrence of 
such disastrous floods in the South would be impossible. 
