New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-04-08
THE IMPENDING FLOOD.
THE yErrY INSTRUCTIONS WOULD rMPxRu
TIE cpopS OF LOUISIANA

luIeAteueO WIFI lnunOatlOu at IouI Z
70 more points. A whole people watchin
line of levees more than 500 miles i
length, with several crevasses and an in
finite number of weak places, at whicl
the labor of year is at the mercy OF
q single crawfsh. We give one specimen
h of what may be apprehended at hundred
points:
There is break on the plantation for
o merly owned by General Braxton Bragg
e now worked by MOreau. The first break
was but twenty feet in width, but has in
creased to $50 feet. 1t has covered between
, | ten and fifteen plantations. The average
= depth Of water is from two to three feet
over the tillable lands.
Can those who at Washington look at
: the Mississippi only as an outlet for their
commerce realize the actual spectacle
here? Awhole people lined along the
frail entertainments which alone keep out a
river whose surface is now higher above
her cultivated lands than the head Of a
man on horseback riding over those lands
would be. The whole people, white and
colored-there are no blacks now too
"arrogant" for associated employment
with shovels in their hands, in instant
readiness, night and day, to repel an IL
exorable enemy.
This is necessary to keep the catfish out
Of the cotton field, and the alligator from
roaming through the sugarhouse or the
parlor. General M. JEFF. Thompson with
his staff gallops along this line. He is
sues proclamations to the very crawish,
and begs the planter-militia to aid his
corporate regulars Of the three-mill hri-
gade. His voice rings out as a clarion
as an audacious alligator rears his
ugly head to peer over the do
main he hopes soon to occupy. And
when the trickling waters slowly creep
along the depression of an improvident
cart rut, Gen eral Thompson dismounts
and throws himself inP the impending
breach. For those who inhabit the banks |
of this invader, more ruthless than Attila |
or Genghis Khan, know that lift once effect |
Judgment upon the counterscarp of our
defenses, devastation pours along its |
course, and desolation follows in its path
way.
Have these foreign and speculative en-
gineers calculated what is behind these
embankments of the Mississippi, Red, and
Ouachita rivers? We will tell them. The
subsistence of more than half a mil
lion of people; the revenues Of season;
the payment Of taxes; the liquidation of
bond, interest and principal; the purchase
OF goods and the payment for those that
have been purchased. Is it sensational
view Of the danger of this great water
siege, to say that the present loss of a
crop would bring more or less ruin upon
this State and city, in the various locali-
ties and interests involved? 1t would
impose upon our creditors abroad, and
our charities at home, an obligation to
carry an increased burden.
1t is when this mighty river covers the
upper valley, in places, for width of
more than twenty miles-when, as the
over river is filled to the brim, when a
ew more inches above its present level
would produce the destruction of the cot
on, sugar and rice crops, to which we
AVE adverted, that speculative contrac-
or, with no other authority than the al
eyed examples of foreign work, comes S
onward with 6. proposition to promote t
be commerce of the Mississippi !
alley. And what means do the plan q
ers and foreign creditors suppose this e
peculative engineer and contractor offers v
D employ? He proposes to narroIc the outlet
f this great food! The mighty Missis-
ippi, meeting nearly tideless sea, run
ing bluff up against wall of ocean t
,aters, compelled by this obstacle to split r
IS channels into numerous passes, this "
peculative engineer now proposes to aid Il
10 sea in this eternal combat with the Il
urrent He will do SO by erecting an il
bstacle which he will call a jetty, and b
lus this tidal level, which runs back fl
ven to the wharves of this city, is to be b
Used by an addition to its height, in p
1itable upon the obstruction intended to n
,ncentrate the current. 1t may be that p
lie professors will undertake to show, ft
pom some principle of hydrostatics con- W
ripted for the occasion, that the con- b
accompanying the confinement CT
the water will depress the tidal level, il
I'd that an obstruction to the free outlet CT
. the water will not affect the level of its st
TRENT above its brink. But the practi- b.
j Franklin once arrested the disputes of at
me learned physicists upon the inquiry tt
Why it was that vessel, being full of 70
ater, would not overflow when a fish of til
given weight was put into it," Franklin N
manded whether the fact was SO? There th
IS no evidence to prove the premises pl
sumea, and SO the consequences predi- is
ted upon that assumption failed. A eli
ssel filed with water to the last drop er
will hold will overflow if fish or other ia
distance of appreciable displacement be as
it into it. These outlets are wholly in be
fficient to discharge the flow and section II
this mighty river. Overspreading the WI
untry above, this current is already be
strained and concentrated by those
ties, the levees, which General Thomp- 70
4 and his shovel brigades now watch mt
til such vigilance. We ask if it be ST.
.sonable to experiment with a further tn