The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-05-10

as bright as sun shine and shower can make
them.
The Southern Floods-Indirect Consc-
quences or bad Government.
Considerable portions of the States of Lou
isiana, Arkansas and Mississippi districts
ordinarily cultivated and yielding splendid
crops of cotton, sugar and corn-are now
under water Our latest report from Arkansas
is that the water stands as high as four feet
above the floors of many of the houses Not
only plantations, but whole valleys ale sub
merged and the people flooded ont. Some
settlements appear to have been under water
three weeks. In Louisiana it is said that the
parishes under water contain two-thirds Of the
wealth, the population, the industry and the
produce Of the State" More than half q mill
ion acres in that State which were under
cultivation in cotton, sugar and corn, are
overlooked, besides million and a half acres
of other lands. All the Yazoo Valley is o lake.
In Arkansas the Washita River, for over two
hundred miles, is from ten to fifty miles wide,
and the people flying before the advancing
waters up this stream, with such property as
they could save, were met by the waters from
the Mississippi crevasses, and were compelled
to make themselves at home on the housetops,
where they remain. It is estimated that the
loss to the cotton crop will be three hundred
thousand bales, to the sugar crop forty thou
sand hogsheads, and that the tobacco and
rice crops will be nearly a total loss.
In some cases the spread Of water over the
country Is due to freshets in the minor streams
that feed the Father Of Waters. Swollen by
the spring rains these streams have exceeded
their ordinary limits, as streams sometimes
do in every country. But the overflow from
freshets is an uncomfortable item in the sum
of the present trouble. 1t is the Eruption of
the Mississippi that gives the event its gravity.
Breaches or "crevasses" have been made by
the river in the levee constructed for the pro-
lection of the bottom lands when the water is
high. As the dykes in Holland protected the
country Of the hardy Dntchmen from the
'.rolling Zuyder Zee,'' so these levees, or
artificial banks, retaining the vast river within
given line, save the rich bottom lands that
border it on either side for nearly the whole
length of the lower river Some of the cre-
vases are half mile wide and ten feet deep,
and through these breaches the waters of the
Mississippi rush out at a rate of from three to
nine miles an hour, an enormous cataract,
with the volume of the great river behind it,
inundating the fertile fields and pleasant places
that are the homes and source of support of
the whole people. The breaches in the levee
are SO numerous that their aggregate width is
counted at fifty miles, and it is estimated that
two thousand million cubic feet of water is
poured every hour upon the fields of the
people upon whom this terrible calamity has
fallen. With this quantity of water flooding
the country in every direction a large part
finds its way into the minor streams and these,
thus swollen, burst other barriers and inundate
new districts.
With large proportion of three States in
this condition there is, of course, scarcely
describable distress among the people. Driven
from their homes, provided only with such
portable stores as they could hastily gather,
they have taken refuge in every conceivable
place. and are making, against every adverse
circumstance, q desperate fight for life. In
some instances the tragedies by the pic
turesque presentation of which art has en-
deavored to convey to US the story of Noah's
Deluge have been repeated in such unprom-
ising lives az those Of the freedmen and
the poor whites of these three States. No chron-
icle can tell the whole of such story. There
are families, and, perhaps, many of them,
now gathered on their housetops, surrounded
by the dreary waste of waters, having eaten the
last of their hastily gathered stores, silently
waiting for death by starvation or for the SUBJ
sidence of the waters And as the trouble
comes from the Mississippi and that river
will continue high for a month, or will even
rise in that period, all this must, necessarily,
be worse before it is better. No physical
calamity so extreme or SO widespread in its
operation ever afflicted the people of this
country.
All this incalculable misery visited upon
country and people is caused by the de-
fective condition of the Mississippi levee; but
what is that caused by? 1t is plain enough
that the broken dykes are to blame for the
presence of the water; but who is to blame for
the broken dykes, and is, therefore. RESPONSE
BILE for the calamity? Is this an occurrence
in the course OF nature, as inevitable as an
earthquake or hurricane. against which no
human foresight or providence can guard? Or
is it o consequence Of criminal disregard to i'm
portant concerns and the failure to take steps
that previous experience has taught are sufh-
cient against this danger?
! 1t is the latter; and the responsibility for
this calamity comes home in great degree to
those who feel it most, as well as to those who
are altogether blnmeless. First of the causes
! doubtless, is the natural effect of the war in
the general breaking up of the whole social
organization OF the Southern country, which
crippled the levee system that had been con-