The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-10-10
VOL. VIII.
TIE SPLENDID MAJESTY OF
TIE MIGHTY RIVER.

They who have stood upon the banks
Of the Mississippi and listened 10 the
sullen roar of it's tawny waters have
surely confessed the majesty of the
mighty river. There is no such i'm
pressive embodiment of tue ideal River
of Death now sweeping multitudes
into the ocean of eternal rest as this
whose heavily groaning current ever
chants a ceaseless requiem over the
graYes of towns and cities along
its shores. The wonders of the
river are numberless. There is sad
ness in the very forests of impenetra-
bic gloom and density that line the
low shores and shut out the suns rays
Towering cypress and dense cotton
wood trees constitute lofty walls of
blackness at night to hedge in the
grosning volume of all the collected
forces OF the countless river between
the great mountain ranges of the con-
tinent. Strangely enough the mighty
current moving slowly, steadily,
soleEnly and with resistless force never
follows the middle of the changeful
channels it is ever carving out for it.
self. 1t trends away to one or the
other side of its prison walls and leans
lazily against it and groans and roars
as if this sluggish movement of
measureless force were painful to the
sluggish, monstrous river. When
weary of resting against the eastern it
slowly moves to the western shore and
its wayward lawlessness is as marvel
Gus as the memories of pilots who
watch, beneath moon and stars, its
ever varying courses and measure by
miniature mielstrOms on its surface
the depth of the boiling billCws. When
men would wall it in, restricting its
| Aoodtide to the narrowest confines, it
deties all restraints and bursting
through dykes and destroying fields
and houses it overwhelms everything
that obstructs its course, carving
out for itself another channel to the
sea. Forests, the growth of countless
centuries, are swept away, and the roar
ing of the angry yellow waters and
falling of great trees uprooted by this
restless subterranean tornado make the
lowlands tremble, as when mastodons
and saurians fought IN the sea that
once covered the course of the great
river of To-day.
Mysterious, too, are the ways of the
great river. 1t constantly upbuilds its
own banks, as If it sought to I'M
prison itself, and were unwll-
ing when its hour of madness
comes, to work all this incaiculabie
ruin that marks Its ungovernable
course. When the river begins to rise
currents come from Western noun
tains bearing the greatest possible
quantity of mud in solution. 1t is the
detrltus from Pixies Peak, brought
down by melting SHOWS of early sum-
mertime. Spread over the lowlands,
these are made richer than if guano
were substituted, and each overflow,
If regulated by artificial drains, like
those that governed the floods of the
Nile, even when pyramid builders
still lived, would add untold sums to
the value of products of matchless
rice, sugar and cotton fields. When
the channel of the river Is barely filled
the supcrabundant water in thin lay
ers runs out very slowly. Having most
mud in solution when it first leaves
the channel, and moving then slowly,
it deposits mud most rapidly, and thus
the banks at the waters edge are most
rapidly uplifted and the rivers walls
grow higher each year until travellers
in steamers from Memphis to the sea
discover that the river runs along the
backbone of the continent, and they
look down upon the housetops of
planters villages everywhere in the
lowlands. When these banks thus
lifted up are accidentally broken when
a crawfish at night has opened a slight
fssure, or some malevolent knave has
done the work, the maddened, angry,
imprisoned waters rush down the hill
side they have reared through the |
weary years, destroying everything in
their path. Here again the process of |
''leveelRg" itself is begun, and again
some accident or sudden force of the |
varying course of the unaccountabls |
current with its whIrlpools begets an
other crevasse and another river chan
mel is carved out of the alllviol HIileS;
and thus the river, ever changing its
oours vthrough successive ages, plows
up every portion of the lowlands of the
average width of fifty miles from Cairo
to the Gulf. OF recent years some in
scrutable force seems to bend the gen.
eral direction of the vast volume of
water towards the sesst. Every spot
and elevated position fortified by Con-
federate armies during the war has
been swept into the sea. Save at
the whole volume of the
rivers current impinges most violently
against its eastern banks. The fortif-
cations st Columbus, Hickman, Fort
Pillow, Randolph and Memphis were
long ago submerged and there is not q
trace Of them left. At no point on its
western shore from Cairo to the Gulf,
save at Helena in Arkansas, does the
rver strike the highlands. oldtown
Lake Of to-day, at the base of high
hills below Helena WAS the rivers
bed in 1898, when De Soto
was entombed in Its depths.
This lake is perhaps thirty miles from
the river OF our time, and by Whist
forces or law this great body of water
ls gradually moved towards the east
while the volga and other rivers OF
Europe that run north or south are
steadily moving west is fact which
can hardly be ascribed to the earth's