uently distressed. The numberless trees and
logs that float along, break its paddles, and retard its progress.
Besides it is on such occasions difficult to procure fuel to maintain
its fires."

In certain parts, the shores of the Mississippi are protected by
artificial barriers called Levees. In such places, during a flood, the
whole population of the district is engaged in strengthening these
barriers, each proprietor being in great alarm lest a crevasse should
open and let in the waters upon his fields. In spite of all exertions
this disaster generally happens: the torrent rushes impetuously over the
plantations, and lays waste the most luxuriant crops.

The mighty changes effected by the inundations of the Mississippi are
little known until the waters begin to subside. Large streams are then
found to exist where none had formerly been. These are called by
navigators _short cuts_, and some of them are so considerable as to
interfere with the navigation of the Mississippi. Large sand-banks are
also completely removed by the impetuous whirl of the waters, and are
deposited in other places. Some appear quite new to the navigator, who
has to mark their situation and bearings in his log-book. Trees on the
margin of the river have either disappeared, or are tottering and bending
over the stream preparatory to their fall. The earth is everywhere
covered by a deep deposit of muddy loam, which, in drying, splits into
deep and narrow chasms, forming a sort of network, from which, in warm
weather, noxious exhalations rise, filling the atmosphere with a dense
fog. The Squatter, shouldering his rifle, makes his way through the
morass in search of his lost stock, to drive the survivors home and save
the skins of the drowned. New fences have everywhere to be formed, and
new houses erected; to save which from a like disaster, the settler
places them on a raised platform, supported by pillars made of the trunks
of trees. "The lands must be ploughed anew; and if the season is not too
far advanced, a crop of corn and potatoes may yet be raised. But the
rich prospects of the planter are blasted. The traveller is impeded in
his journey, the creeks and smaller streams having broken up their banks
in a degree proportionate to their size. A bank of sand, which seems
firm and secure, suddenly gives way beneath the traveller's horse, and
the next moment the animal has sunk in the quicksand, either to the chest
in fr