hurrying over what were once farm lands, rescuing the
unfortunate families who have been caught by the floods.

The Mississippi, the largest river on our continent, flows through what is
known as the Gulf Coast Plain.

The Gulf Coast Plain is formed by the valley lying between the great
mountain ranges which make the framework of our country.

The Mississippi with its tributaries drains the whole of the enormous
tract of land lying between these three main mountain ranges.

This great river forms the highway for the interior of our country, and
winds through the plain for about a thousand miles. Every year when the
heavy spring rains fall, and the snows melt in the north, the river
overflows its bed, and floods the lowlands around it.

To keep the river within its bounds, mounds of earth, called levees, have
been built for hundreds of miles along the banks. The Mississippi floods
are only dangerous when the thaws are very sudden, or the rains so heavy
that the river swells in size to such an extent that the levees are broken
down, and the water, bursting its bounds, rushes with an angry flood over
the surrounding country, destroying everything in its path.

As a usual thing the spring floods are beneficial to the country, for the
Mississippi is a very muddy river, and when it overflows it spreads this
mud over the country, in much the same fashion that the Nile does, and
with the same result of fertilizing and enriching the soil.

All swift waters wash away some portion of their bed in their flow, and
carry it along with them in their journey to the sea.

The Mississippi in its thousand-mile course carries a vast amount of this
stolen earth, so much indeed that every year it deposits in the Gulf of
Mexico an amount of mud which would make a pile one mile square and 268
feet high.

[Illustration]

This enormous yearly deposit is literally filling up the Gulf, and in the
ages to come dry land and a new country will be found where the waters of
the Gulf now lie.

Every year the Mississippi brings down enough earth with it to help it
move its mouth 338 feet farther out into the sea, and every year it builds
on to its delta, which now contains thousands of square miles!

You can understand that the angry flood of such a powerful river as this
must be a very serious matter. For a distance of nearly twenty miles in
Arkansas, levees have given way, and thousands of acres of land have been
flooded; the waters sweep