Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1897 — The FLOOD OF '97 [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The FLOOD OF '97

THE central Mississippi region, embracing some of tlie richest farm lands of Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, has been transformed into a great inland sea. Six thousand square miles of territory are under water, forming a monster and dreary panorama of ruin and misery. Farms, villages and even small cities are completely subnierg-

ed. Several hundred human beings have probably perished in the flood. Thousands have been carried to Memphis and other places of safety by Mississippi steamboats which pick their way among the tree tops, while other thousands still eliug to their homes nud refuse to leave. Beds, stoves and other furniture have been carried to the roofs and there these stoical people eat and sleep and sigh as'they wait for the waters to fall. In many eases, chickens, pigs and cows are with them on the housetops. . Should the waters rise to where they are encamped these stoics will build rafts, encamp on them and drift whither the winds and currents carry them. Then, indeed, will the death list be swelled to appalling figures. But the prospect is not so dismal, for the waters are failing. Though worse may come, existing conditions are bail enough. From Cairo, 111., to Memphis, a distance of nearly 250 miles, the river is over its banks and the average width of submerged land is twen-ty-five miles. It is a long line of blackness and despair, with the surface of the muddy waters covered with floating timbers, wrecked houses, eddies of bloated dead animals, with an occasional lifeless human being mixed with the debris. Here and there is a mound or housetop. On some of the latter are found suffering, half-starved human beings and on the former small groups of shivering animals, wild and tame. It is not an uncommon thing to see cattle, hogs, sheep, coons, rabbits, deer and bears thus herded together. The Mississippi is a cruel stream and never a spring passes that does not see it leave its banks and overflow the lowlands. These lands are mostly devoted to the cultivation of wheat nud corn in the central section and cotton and sugar in Louisiana and Mississippi. Above Memphis there are no levees to speak of. There are a few, but they are as chaff when the big floods come. Tennessee is but little affected even at the highest stages of the river.

The banks on the left are high and are supported by rocky hills that creep up almost to the river's edge. The volume of water is therefore thrown with all its terrible force to the unprotected Bides of Arkansas’ territory, backing up the smaller rivers and streams, causing them to overflow the lakes, thus creating an inland

sea that adds new territory to its cruel waste hour by hour until the entire surplus waters of the north have gone to join the salty waves of the southern seas. A few weeks ago the snows began to melt in the Alleghany and Rocky mountains, and this, with the spring rains, caused the little mountain streams to pour great volumes of water iuto the Missouri, Ohio and Cumberland rivers. These, in turn,., swelled the Mississippi iuto a turbulent torrent, and the waters broke through the levees between Cairo and Memphis and caused a flood greater than has been known in five years. As soon as the reports reached Memphis nnd other points, relief boats were sent out to bring the half-drowned people to places of safety. Government boats were ordered out by the War Department. Thus thousands were saved who might have perished from hunger and cold. Nearly 10,000 persons were carried to Memphis alone. Not all the villages, however, are deserted. From some of them, which stand on high ground, and where the water runs through the streets at a depth of only a few feet, none of the residents have departed, but make the best of the situation by plying about in small boats. Some of the scenes are graphically de-

scribed by a writer who covered the entire section when the water was at its highest, on a steamer, which made its way slowly over the vast body of water, and stopped wherever human beings were in sight to pick them up. He says: “In this body of water are occasional spots formed by what under normal conditions are lofty bluffs and high ridges of land. On these are gathered the popula-

tion for miles about, sleeping and living in the open air or beneath the meager protection of a bit of canvas hoisted above them oil strips of lumber or rough driftwood snatched from the encircling waters. Hunger, sickness, privation, loss of life and property abound. Hundreds of these Southern settlers remain in the inundated districts and battle stubbornly with the

resistless waters, clinging tenaciously to their few belongings, and loth to leave the old spots which have become endeared to them. “Hundreds of others view with indifference the rising waters, and remove from first floors to second floors, and at last to floating rafts and slowly withdraw to

higher points, only to bf ’again pushed back. The apparent indifference of so cm* of these people is astounding. They have always lived in the same spot, and when offers are made to remove them to places of safety, they shake their heads and refuse to be aided. With sacks of corn carefully preserved, and with an occasional rabbit or bird, they eke out a scant existence. To them a place of safety is a strange land in which they have no kindred, and where existence can only be secured by exertion. They have passed through other periods of flood and managed to ‘live through it somehow,’ and the most graphic description of the horrors to come fails to move them. ‘The water will drap bimeby,’ they say. "The situation is worst about fifty miles above Memphis. There the water stretches as far as the eye can see. It is nearly forty miles neross at this point. Little settlements are indicated by the tops of rough board roofs, which protrude from the water, and which the Uiat passes slowly. On gome higher points, men,

women nnd children, cows, pigs, chickens, and even horses are to be seen huddled together and clustered about stoves, which have been carried out on roofs. A dugout canoe or two is usually pulled up beside these roofs, and the former occupants lie basking in the sun, some blessing God for its warmth, while others grumble and curse nature for the abundance of

water. Some of the queerest sights to be seen are where the settlers take to what they call the ‘scaffolding plan.’ Groups of four or five houses stand among the trees, in which the stoves, rough beds nnd a kitchen table are raised on scaffolds so close to the roofs of the houses that the occupants are obliged to stoop over as they stand on floating platforms leaning over tlie stove or table. The women and ehil-

dren are forced to lie on the bed while the head of the house cruises about the vicinity and gathers driftwood to be dried and used for fuel.” The flood of 1892 destroyed growing crops and property to the'value of $20,000,000. The present cannot be even approximately estimated, but it will far exceed that of five years ago. From St. Louis to Cairo, all of that immense basin that was created by the earthquake fifty years ago, is deep enough to swim a steamboat. This section embraces a remarkably big part of the wheat fields of southern Illinois and Missouri. The submerged farms may be entirely useless for grain purposes for the remainder of the year. It. takes growing wheat a long time to recover from a flood, however short the period may be that it has suffered. So if the Missouri and Illinois valleys are not instantly drained the fall wheat crop there is gone. But it is south of Cairo and clear down to New Orleans where the real damage is now being done. That is the part of the country that lies unprotected, where millions of acres of fertile fields and hundreds of homes belonging to the laboring people are absolutely at the mercy of the remorseless waters.

IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF PADUCAH.

SCENE ON PRESIDENT ISLAND, BELOW MEMPHIS.

SCENES ALONG THE RIVER NEAR MEMPHIS.