VIEWS OF LOUISIANA. 
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buildings, and sometimes the land itself is much injured where 
the current rushed over, carrying away the soil, or leaving nu< 
merous logs and trees drawn into the vortex as they floated down 
the river; these must be destroyed before the land can again be 
cultivated. The effects of a breach of the levee are even more 
desolating than those of fire. 
Though not ambitious of the reputation of a projector, I can¬ 
not refrain from expressing the following notions on the mode 
which ought to be pursued. It strikes me that this, as is the 
case with every great public work in the United States, should 
be resigned to a company organized for the purpose, who might 
draw a henefit from the undertaking, and at the s^me time be res- 
ponsible to the individual for the injury which he sustains. When 
we see the enormous expense in constructing turnpikes for the 
purpose of facilitating the transportation of goods and for travel¬ 
ling) it would b® 00 great exertion pf public spirit, for people to 
go to the same expense in securing not only those objects, but 
their all . One hundred thousand dollars would make the levee 
twenty feet wide at the base, and ten feet at the top from New 
Orleans, on the east side, to Baton Rouge; the expenses then 
would not be greater than in keeping a turnpike road in repair, 
The travelling up and down the coast is as great as on any of 
pur turnpikes, and the tolls would yield as much. There is no 
planter on the coast who would not pay two dollars per acre 
front per annum, to be exempt from the labor of keeping up 
his Jevee, and for the security fie would gain from one made 
on such a scale. It is a fact, there is not a planter on the Mis¬ 
sissippi, whose plantation might not be ruined in half an hour, 
and perhaps Jess time by some villain, wicked enpugh to do it: 
he would only have to make a breach in the levee, which the cur¬ 
rent would soon widen sufficiently fpr his purpose. Centinels 
during the highest stage of water, are continually walking on 
the Jevees, as wejl to prevent such attempts, as to watch apy in¬ 
roads of the water. 
they can succeed this far, earth is then thrown upon the whole, and tfcu§ 
a, new levee formed. As a preventative where the lev^e appears to be 
about giving away, coffer dams are erected. 
