Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1890-05-01
TERRIBLE DESTRUCTION.


Fearful Havoc Wrought in Louisiana by
the Mississippi FIood-Plantztions Ruined
and Thousands Destitute.
NEW ORLEANS, April 25.-Ruin and
desolation meet the eye on every side in
Pointe Coupee Parish. The restitution
Is complete. Not q plantation is left
above water, not a levee unbroken,
while hundreds of families are home
less. Thousands of stock have been
drowned and from meager reports re-
ceived from the interior it is quite prob
able human life has been sacrificed to
the flood.
The steamer Dacotah reached the real
point of distress yesterday after a
stormy passage up the river and after
many delays in furnishing assistance to
the weak and the breaking levees west
of Baton Rouge. Her arrival was a
Godsend to the people whose lives were
in jeopardy. for she has already saved
an 1ncalculable amount of property and
goodly plumber of lives
ALI that remains now are strips of
land here and there showing above the
flood. The water back of the levees is
so deep that hundreds of lives are in
jeopardy.
The small stretches of levee still
standing are crowded with men, women
and children side by side with horses,
mules and cows.
At Colonel Claiborne's place, several
miles above Bayou Sara, the water is
waist deep. At the base of the levee in
an old raised ginhouse 500 negroes were
found huddled together, while hundreds
of head of stock were standing in water
up to their breasts The condition of
the unfortunate blacks was pitiable.
Tuesday night while the Dacotah was
tied up at Allendale, where several
thousand feet of lumber and 5000 sacks
were put of, the levee in front of John
A. Lobdell's place broke and in ten
minutes was sixty feet wide and ten
feet deep. The planters were unable to
do any thing owing to the terrible storm
and rain prevailing at the time, and
looked helplessly upon the water as it
poured through the breaks and mum
dated their magnificent plantations.
This break will ruin the crops of fifty of
the finest plantations on the river.
Standing on the deck of the relief
steamer Dacotah as she passed down
within fifty yards of the flooded district
the full extent of the disaster could be
seen. Grouped together on little knobs
the water rushed with ungovernable
fury, were scores of people, both white
and black, some with babes in their
arms, while others had dogs secured by
cord. Many of them had nothing else
in the world except the clothes they
wore on their backs. Whenever the
Dacotah discovered scene like that the
stage was swung out and the stricken
ones taken aboard.
Equally as sad a scene was the Door
dumb cattle standing. in the water actu-
ally starving. Many of them had not
tasted food in days. Their gaunt forms
.contrasted strangely with their sur
rOundingS.
United States Engineer Douglass tele-
graphs that Point Pleasant levee, Ten
sas Parish, gave way yesterday morning.
Point Pleasant is twenty-three miles be-
low Vicksburg and the levee there is one
of the most important on the TenSas
front. The water from it will no doubt
overflow the greater part of the parish.
Captain John A. Grant, superintend-
emit of the Texas & Pacific railroad,
speaking of the Morgansea crevasse,
says: s'This is one of the worst calam-
tiles that could have befallen the resi-
dents of this State, and yet it could have
been avoided if the people had only
made an effort. They are to blame for
it. Now they are creating big hubbub
about sending relief up there and all
that sort of thing, while before the dis
aster occurred they seemed utterly I'M
aware of the impending danger. If need
be, they should have raised S5OO,OO to
hold that levee, and it could have
been done, too, and been well invest
ed, as there is $40, 0OO, 900 worth of prop
erty that will now be irretrievably dam
aged, which a little display of energy
would certainly have averted. I have
been on Morgansea levee but once in
my life, and that was some time ago.
but from reliable information which 1
received, the break occurred some $50
feet from the new levee. Colonel T. G.
Sparks, who was on the levee at the
time, states that by the next morning
the breach was 400 feet wide. He i'm
mediate1y boarded the Wheelock and
set to work picking up his men and the
g. - ~