Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1901 — THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. [ARTICLE]

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

It Furnishes Many Kxamples of tlio Mlglit of Small Things. "I have been very much impressed with the importance of small things in late years,” said an old steamboat man, “and the Mississippi River has furnished me some rather good exam.ples. I can understand now why Caesar looked out upon the Nile in such curious amazement and offered all that he stood for to the Egyptian priest if he would show him the source of that wonderful river. But the antics of the Nile look like insignificant nothings to me when compared with the strange conduct of the stream that pozes out of the earth at Itasca and hurries on its murky and devious way toward the Gulf of Mexico. Towns along the Mississippi that stood right on the bank of the river have been isolated even in toy day, and there are, too, all along the course of the stream little empires in view where the river has encroached upon small centres of population, finally eating the earth away and forcing the inhabitants to seek other quarters. There are hundreds of these places that are almost forgotten now even by the men who are constantly on the river. “What brings about these violent changes along the banks of the river? Not floods. It Is Just the ordinary doings of the stream. In the first place the current of the Mississippi is wonderfully swift, and the sediment deposited at any point where resistance to the flow is offered is very great. Tie a string to the neck of a bottle and sink it with the mouth of the bottle up and open. “If held in one place where the flow Is normal in an extremely short period of time the bottle will fill with sediment. Stretch a net across the river, a net so finely woven tha,t nothing but the pure water of the river can pass through, and on account of the rapidity of the flow and the greatness of the deposit of sediment, almost in a twinkling the river would be dammed at that point Experts have admitted this. This brings me to the point of my narrative. “The flow of currents Is frequently Interfered with by sunken boats, perhaps by a Jackstaff sticking up above the surface. The current is diverted by degrees, generally touching the far side of the stream a mile from the point where It again meets resistance, and immediately begins the building of a sandbar. I have seen a thousand examples of this sort during my career on the river, and I have known of Instances where the root of a tree or the mere twig of a willow have brought about similar conditions. These things have tended to make a riddle out of the river; yet the stream after a while will be handled so as to undo all that it has accomplished in this way.”— New Orleans Times-Democrat