satisfied he would have
beaten me if we had exchanged vessels. The superiority was in the
steamer, and not in the management.

The river presented the same unvarying features, and in the whole of
Plaquemine Parish, which contains the river almost up to New Orleans
and the Delta, there is no land more than ten feet above the level of
the gulf. The water was loaded with a sort of yellow mud, and it was
easy enough to see how the levees had been formed and the Delta
projected far out into the gulf.

When the water, for any reason, lost its five-mile current, the soil it
contained was deposited on the bottom. As the mighty stream brings its
load of mud down to the gulf, it is left there, and the same force
works it to each side. In this way, though the effect of a century of
accumulations are hardly perceptible, the Delta has been extended
fifteen or twenty miles out into the gulf.

In this mud, which forms the bars at the mouth of the river, vessels
drawing from sixteen to twenty feet ground; but their keels are driven
through it by strong tugs, or even by the winds acting on the sails.
The State of Louisiana has to look out for its levees almost as
carefully as Holland does for its dikes. Millions have been spent on
them, and every year requires additional expenditures to keep them in
repair. Even New Orleans is four feet below high-water mark, as well as
much of the surrounding country. The levees, created by the deposit of
sediment from the river, and by human labor, are broken through when
the freshets send the water down faster than the flow of the river will
carry it off.

As I have said before, it was now a season of unusually high water. The
country beyond the levees was covered. Sugar, cotton, and rice
plantations were inundated. Occasionally we could see a group of houses
on a knoll, like an island, but a few inches above the level of the
water. In other places we saw dwellings floating, and others still in
their places, but partly submerged. It all looked to me like a region
in which I should not care to live.

"We are leaving the Islander a good way behind us," said Washburn, when
I returned to the pilot-house, after my survey of the surrounding
country.

"She is only about half a mile astern of us," I replied. "I suppose we
shall gain about half a mile an hour on her in this current, when we
drive the Sylvania."

"It is five o'clock in the afternoon," added the mate, glancing at the
clock. "I estimat