802 
POn^Sr ANt) STREAM. 
itbijc. 26, 1903. 
s 
Floating Down the Mississippi, 
m.— As to a Lying Rtver. 
The first few miles down the Mississippi were as dis- 
appointing as my first view of it had been. There was 
plentj^ of water in sight — twenty feet above low water 
mark, I think — but the banks were just willows — a low, 
level green line of them on one side, and on the other, 
Missouri, a line of "bluffs" — tree-grown elifTs — with a 
railroad's gashing along their face. Here and there were 
dwellings and open lands, but for the most part trees grew 
and covered what they could of the limestone, which 
seemed to be disintegrating. The trees were in their 
autumn foliage, but somehow the sallowness of the yel- 
low river had spread high above even its high water 
mark, forcing its dull yellow hues or rusty Shades upon 
everything in sight. 
It was a dull scene, without striking contrasts, but it 
was a most engaging one. No single feature arrested 
the attention for more than a glance of lime. It was 
interesting, but it seemed to me as if I had merely a long 
journey on a yellow river, lake-like in its dimensions so 
far as I could see, with the addition of a constant motion 
forward, which very quickly ceased to be "flowing" in 
the mind, but became "lurching heavily onward," first 
against one bank and then the other, but so quietly and 
softly that it was merely amusing. Had I not been fore- 
Avarned by the stories of men who knew the river, it 
would have been easy to become another of the guileless 
victims of the stream. As it was, I thought the river was 
"easy." 
Enlightenment does not come all at once, nor as a re- 
sult of true statements in appearances. Likely enough the 
first awakening from a sense of being equafto the occa- 
sion that a man has on the river is a view of tumbling 
waves far ahead. The water seems fairly to rear up in 
the air, toss cream froth, and be in every way fearsome 
to the man in a skiff. On my first day afloat, while the 
water around me pitched and rolled, away down the river 
it looked calm and glassy, as if I was in a mere flaw of 
gale, and had only to get out of it to find gentle zephyrs. 
The waves were ripples, the calm, mirage. The Missis- 
sippi is a corporation liar. 
Again on a quiet day when the surface is so smooth 
that the eye gazing far ahead sees the curve where the 
water banks up in the bend of the river before it swings 
off to right or left, like the fragment of a monstrously 
large and wonderfully shallow saucer, the current car- 
ries one closer and closer to banks of earth against which 
the water is sawing, and there is a good view had of soil 
in layers feet thick, marked by thin lines where weeds 
grew during a few months and then were covered by an- 
other layer in another flood or two. The stillness, the 
warmth, the softness of the air against which the voyager 
is borne, quite lull every suspicion, and the one to whom 
it is all novel would certainly resent the intrusion of a 
harsh thought. Not even the sifting down of a little rivu- 
let of sandy earth in that bank rouses one, but the thing 
that jumps his stomach into his throat, sends him claw- 
ing for the oars and drives him far from that shore is the 
pitching forward of ten tons of the earth flat-faced upon 
the water. A "pop" sound, as if some giant had burst 
a flour sack on his knee, is heard, a flicker of dust and 
flying spray is seen, and then the water lifts up and a 
wave comes forward, sometimes very high, with the bald 
top showing just a line of frowsy curl. 
However sentimental one may become on one of these 
"pretty" days, it takes a good deal more than mere senti- 
mental force to retain the feeling when the banks are 
caving a few yards away. A scene that has hitherto seemed 
serenely peaceful becomes in a breath one of tragedy when 
a sliding bank settles or a caving one falls. A most im- 
pressive spectacle it is when the water of a storm a 
thousand miles away is cutting into the acres to see a 
once wealthy farmer watching his plantation go yard by 
yard day by day, unable to do more than guess at the 
time of the end, till at last the corner of his home, once 
a mile inland, sags down— deserted by this time, of 
course— and nothing is left. It is not the least of the 
tragic wonders of the Big River. 
There is a system to circumvent the lying stream now 
by which the man on an Illinois bottom — and elsewhere! 
—may read that heavy rains are falling in Iowa, Wiscon- 
sin, Minnesota, and northern Missouri. It may be his 
corn is planted and growing weather has brought the 
bottoms to such a state of corn beauty that he is exultant. 
Perhaps there is a little rain, just enough to keep things 
growing nicely; the river smiling and way down. 
He reads that the Wisconsin River is rising; Des 
Moines has begun to tear up bridges, and Omaha has ex- 
perienced the worst rain in the memory of the prophets, 
and then the state of his mind may be imagined. This 
year it was reported that "Rain favors Missouri," on May 
20, m an item from Columbia. At St. Louis the water 
was 21 feet, rising— the danger line 30— weather fair and 
warm. At Chester, III., the water stood at 16 feet, danger 
line 30. On May 29 there were 24.4 feet of water above 
the low mark at St. Louis and 20 feet at Chester. On 
the 2d of June the water was within a tenth of an inch 
of the danger line at St. Louis. At Chester, seventy miles 
below, the water was still only 23.7 feet— but in the basin 
above rains were pouring down. Missouri— "The Big 
Muddy —was commg, more than bank full. Long before 
it reached him the farmer in the low land knew what to 
expect. \\' ith his crops doing well, his corn looking fine, the 
river still low and mnocent-appearing, he began to think 
of how much he would save of it. At Kansas City, Mo , 
the water was 14 feet above the danger line of 21 feet— 
this water was coming down on the people of the lower 
valley They watched the marks— logs and sticks and 
sand bars, by which they measured the height of the 
stream— go under one by one. The water poured into the 
willow bottoms, fil ed the chutes and sloughs, came to 
the edges of the cultivated lands, went coursing over the 
lowest of these, tnnkling forward into the foot prints 
left by the horses and mules when they hauled the 
platiter, and in mimic flo'od rushfed aloiig the wheel ruts 
^if it rose an inch ah hour it was coming fast. And so 
it was loHg driwh agony. It was not possible to keep the 
Water out of those hoof prints and wheel ruts, small as 
they were and slow as the water came. There was timi: 
to take the cattle to the Missouri hills, and the family to 
tents on the bluffs. 
And then can?" long lists of disasters — bridge;? down, 
houses floating ayv-v. laggards dfowncd, still miles awav, 
but upstream, and each day closer by forty miles. St. 
Louis reported 39 feet and Chester went to 33 feet a 
Couple of days later. And then the Illinois bottoms were 
drowned out — the flood was upon the farmei\ even thoitgli 
the sun had not been clouded under. 
It is a good system by whieh the heights of Water 
hundreds of miles down Stream is foretold from the gauge 
readings at St. Paul, KanSas City and other up-river 
towns, but to my mind there could be no more nerve- 
racking one than this of foretelling the danger with re- 
lentless, scientific accuracy, as done by the U. S. Weathei 
Bureau. It is even worse than visions of fire, for it is 
foretelling clammy and snake-like. 
The evidences of the floods in low watef are hidden 
from the ncwComer's eyes by his ignorance of the sign^ 
they leave. It is the dark yellow Une on the sldes'of 
houses half a lilile from the river, indicating the high 
water mark that Comes to his notice first of all, probably, 
and Cau.ses the natural question of "What made that?" 
Away off yonder, somewhere, is the river, beyond woods 
and fields, unheard, unseen and unthought of, yet here is 
its mark, a foot higher than one can reach. 
On the first night out Jimmie and I ran a hundred 
>ards up an unknown — to us— stream, and tied to a wil- 
low tree a couple inches in diameter and began to chuck 
the duffle around making a camp on the boat, putting up 
the square of canvas A-tent fashion, and that sort of 
thing, but we quickly dropped down into the wind at the 
mouth of the creek, for mosquitoes were out a plenty, 
and to spare. We spooned together in the stern that 
night, and slept considerable of the time. Morning came, 
and with it a dismal rain which lasted several hours, and 
that was the bluest day I had experienced in a long time. 
1 was glad that the current was there to carry me onward 
in spite of my feelings. It was gloomiest of all when, 
after the sun came out, Jimmie had to go back to St. 
Louis and I pulled out on the river, very much alone, ex- 
cept the wild geese and ducks, the swirling waters and 
insides that worked up into the back of my mouth, but 
dismal and lonesome as it makes me, I don't want to get 
over the feeling of homesickness. 
I wrote in my diary four or five miles below River- 
side — ^where Jimmie was to take the cars, but got carried 
three miles past it, we not knowing the town when we 
saw it — "On the right bank (Missouri) are high bluffs, 
limestone cliffs full of holes where the water has ground 
out moon- and round- and sugar-loaf-shaped cavities, and 
here" — a ways further down — "is a wilderness, the trees 
just turning on the right, and on the left are cavirtg 
banks, covered with second growth poplar twenty feet 
high, but now pitching into the river, the green heads 
of the fallen washing in the water, and one just whirling 
out from the lower end of the bank with the send of 
the current. The wearing away of the bank is done 
through the tangled fallen, root-washed trees. Blue is 
the sky, blue (reflection) the water, dim the bluish sun, 
blue the distant shores, and lonely the lad afloat." 
At intervals all along were "Government works"— 
dikes of piles and rip-rap, or broken stone facing of em- 
bankments. To the mere river traveler the dikes were 
fearsome things to look upon, for they consist of rows of 
piling, the piles being driven in bunches of four, in holes 
sucked out and pumped out to the required depth, any- 
where from fifteen to sixty feet or so, and then the poles 
are bound together with wire rope, each bunch separate. 
The bunches reach out into the river in long sloping 
lines of black, for scores of yards, serving two purposes, 
one to protect the bank below, the other to send the 
water into the ship channel. On occasion it is used to 
wear away the opposite bank — which purpose it always 
serves, willy nilly, if the bank is silt, unless rip-rap is 
used to protect the place where the deflected current 
strikes the far shore. 
A most unpleasant thing to look upon are these rows of 
black headed piling. A dim flickering line in the distance, 
a closer view shows a loose pile here and there, flinging 
back and forth, a bending, pounding arm, slashing the 
water with a loud evil sound, and thumping its fellows 
on occasion with hollow booming. All along these 
dikes the water pours through with a loud noise, in- 
creased by the drift caught along them, while the current 
at the outside end leaves the obstruction in whirling coils. 
There are thirty-five pile drivers on the river, and they 
are put to all sorts of tasks on occasion. At Little Rock 
Landing I found one furnishing steam to drill blasting 
out of the rip-rap, and one may find them making pin- 
cushions of all kinds of river bed. If he goes down be- 
hind some of the islands he is likely enough to find dikes 
already there, with rod high piles of drift against them 
impassable to anything but tooth picks and the water. 
These dikes serve the purpose of making mud deposits 
behind them and so filling in the sloughs, and thus deep- 
ening the river channel by confining all the water to it. 
In this work of running the river into one channel, the 
benefit to navigation is obvious, and also to farmers likely 
to be inundated or completely washed away by a change 
in the course of the main current from one side of an 
island to another. 
One is not long afloat before he watches the water 
eddy in around his boat, boiling up from the bottom, or 
going down in little swirls or sucks, according to the lay 
of the bottom. To watch this apparently tliick mass is 
sure to suggest that an enormous quantity of material is 
conveyed down the river every year into the Gulf of 
Mexico, And the fact that behind the dikes, wrecks, 
snags, and other river obstructions the silt gathers in 
masses many feet deep in the course of a single flood, 
confirms the suspicion, The river sharps have studied the 
matter with care, and they tell some things in long lines 
of figures that are intensely interesting to those who 
care to view the river even from the deck of reeerd mak- 
ing steamboats. The figures are most meaning ones to 
the man who floats in steamers, for the pilot of the craft 
has constantly to remember that such and such a bar is 
making, and such another one is walking diagonally 
across the stream to some point some miles below. Noth- 
ing in the whole river is the same from day to day. In 
.Some places the change is imperceptible, but the simple fact 
that more than half the lights of the Government mark- 
ing the Channel of the river had to be shifted from half 
to a mile and a half after the flood last spring indicates 
soraclhing of the ffipving nature of the stream and its 
Led. A rivet in which a sand bar a mile lotig moves a 
iriile down .stream in one flood has carrying power which 
even a woodsman with an acquaintance with snow drifts 
can understand, but the scientists_ say that it takes 6,000 
years for the Mississippi to lower its drainage surface one 
foot. Great as is the river, it is not too large for the 
basin that it drains, and compared to which its mud and 
.'hiftin^ Sand.? and acres of drift are but stray Specks 
and pulp fibres. 
But to the hunlan mind these specks are quite sizable. 
The figures are small to start with I "The average ratio 
of dry sedinientafy matter (frorrl water secured one part 
each at Randolph and Carthage and two at NeW Orleans) 
to the weight of water and sediment equals near 1-1245." 
By another method, water being poured into a long tube 
from the river and allowed to settle, a mass of water with 
an aggregate height of 1,936 feet deposited a solid column 
of 46;^ inches, the water covering two years of the riycr 
flow. This gives a mean proportionate quantity of i tb, 
528. In the main current, whether near the surface or 
near the bottom, no difference could be detected in the 
quantity of sediment carried; the sand and gravel— the 
bottom flood — were not considered in these figures. 
The sediment carried into the Gulf yearly would make 
a pile a mile square and from 263 to 268 feet high — more 
new that the levees do not permit the water to spread out 
on the bottoms and deposit layers of soil- on them, and 
this amount will gradually increase as the levees are 
brought to completion, and the river is kept from stop- 
ping on the way to the Gulf. If the water moves at a 
certain speed, there will be erosion, and not depositing. 
Part of the work on the river — the major part — has been 
to use this simple fact that the sediment will not settle if 
the water is kept moving fast enough, and it will if it is 
checked, hence retarding dikes and deflecting dikes. 
As I floated with the current and looked at that simple 
line of bluffs, the wide, scarcely ruffled waters, and the 
v,'il]ow banks, it was for a long time difficult to associate 
the figures in my note books with these three elements. 
The mind was confused, as the eyes are when -one comes 
out of the light into darkness, and even now, after nearly 
three weeks of close association with mud banks, wind- 
drifted sand, islands, chutes, sloughs, and river people, 
there is much of that same confusion. Old Jack Steven- 
son, with whom I traveled from Kaskaskia to Tipton- 
ville, where I am now, time and again picked up sticks 
saying, "Here's a piece of batten," or "that come out of 
somebody's house," or "I guess this is part of an old 
cupboard." That scattered drift, sawed and natural, was 
one mass of details, many of which I ought to have been 
able to see, and yet I could not. And in the pjCtty things 
like making camp and preparing meals I was at constant 
loss in my efforts to think what next to do. 
Some odds and ends from ray diary will show just as 
well as anything of what a close association with the 
river will do to one at first. I give them as written : 
"In midstream, rafts of ducks, a dull, blue day; still 
those great limestone hills, with hollows through which 
the wind comes when opposite — in the far distance a row- 
boat. On the Missouri side the hills, on the other the 
flats, with landing sheds. Ducks in great flocks look like 
serpents when flying; islands when afloat. Tennessee 
and Ohio River not a circumstance — what must it be be- 
low? Beautiful, beautiful! Even the Government dikes 
show the size of the stream, movable teeth that they are, 
sawing and slashing back and forth in the wind." 
Where my eyes and thoughts were when I wrote of ten 
inch piling tossed by the "wind" is problenatical. Sitting 
with eyes three feet above the surface of the wide water, 
it is not an uncommon optical delusion to see a broad 
strip of "sky" in the distance between an island and the 
v/ater — a mirage effect — so with the mind brought close to 
the "Father of the Waters," it notices things, but in 
somewhat twisted aspects. 
A caving bank led to this : "Solid (sic) banks of silt 
with layers of vegetation — mere thin lines — between one, 
two, three feet layers to show that there (at the lines^ 
floods rested, and tumed back, and above a new flood laid 
a new layer— and now another flood takes all that the 
others deposited for purposes of its own further down 
the river. Governed by rigid laws, yet the river seems to 
be at play — here building, there tearing down, nowhere 
giving man peace." 
Large islands have been entirely washed away well 
within the memory of men, and others are in the process 
of building, but of late years the vigilance of the "Gov- 
ernment Workers" has begun to regulate these changes 
more or less in conformity with the ideas of the river peo- 
ple. The man who sees his plantation eaten away t)y the 
thrust of a dike put in four miles or so above him in or- 
der to give steamers a better chance, is likely to be biased 
as to the work done, and so is he whose boat goes round 
a long bend where a short cut off would shorten the way 
many miles, when strong eft'orts to save the caving penin- 
sula are made, as at Cairo. 
This much has been accomplished by the commission in 
i-egard to the caving bank. It was able to say in this 
year's report (for fiscal year) r 
"We have reached a stage, in the development of bank 
protection work where we can confidently undertake to 
prevent further bank recession at places where the inter- 
e.^ts involved will justify the expense." 
It's a bit tough on one to read a sentence like that, 
tor if it has taken the Mississippi River Commission 
twenty-five years to reach a point where it could conii- 
dently say it had learned how to do one of the things it 
ha set out to do with the river — this is not all the com- 
mission has learned, of course— how long would it take 
a man to learn everything about the river? But it is 
easier to learn- the Mississippi and what it will do than 
to make it do anything, Raymond S. Speabs. 
