The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-16

the coast, valued at ten million dollars, belong to Louisiana or Mississippi. The old maps declare in favor of Louisiana. The contention of Mississippi is that these maps are incorrect, and that the country in dispute has always been the mixture of marsh, mud and water it is to-day. As the country was uninhabi- ted and deemed valueless, the carto- graphers did not think it worth while to make a survey of the marsh and give petty details in which no one was interested. Therefore, they made the entire section in dispute dry land in their maps.
 Much testimony was heard from fishermen, yachtsmen and others who had visited the country at different times in twenty-five years. They told of marvellous changes, some in single might, of islands that had appeared and disappeared; land that was point one day and a bayou the following day. | One witness, a leading merchant of this lefty, who cruised through this section in 1891, visited it again this year. AL | though there had been no storm during | this period, he had found the face of the lcountry so changed as to be scarcely recognizable. Round island, which he visited on his trip, had disappeared, a1- i though still shown on all maps. There | is lighthouse still shown, but this has not been in existence for years, the is
 land washing away piece by piece.
 Martin island had also disappeared.
 These are only few of the many dead
 islands. So confused was the testimo ny on the point of islands that there
 was much debate among counsel as to
 what an island was. for there seemed
 some disposition to contend that in case
 at low tide, the island, while moribund. could not be regarded as extinct. l But the greatest changes were in the
 bayou. A sudden storm would change
 everything in a night. A fisherman.
 who was out in the desolate country
 during the storm of October, 1898,
 which did much harm on the western coast of Louisiana, reports that where
 he camped at Three-Mile bayou he
 found next morning a bay twelve feet
 deep. Barely year afterward, in No- | NGlIlUtTs loJ7, dHOlHSE SlUiIl uOuplcQ
 the width and depth of the bayou. All the witnesses testified that Creole
 Pass, now, one of the largest in that
 section, six hundred feet wide, did not
 exist twenty-five years ago; it was born
 in some great storm, and since then it
 had grown in .'jumps''-not widening
 gradually, but at each storm. What
 was true of Creole Pass and Three-M Mile
 bayou was equally true of the other ba-
 yous of that section. Bayou Louter,
 Nine-Mile bayou, Petite Pass, Little
 Pass, which has grown larger than Grande pass; Blind Pass and Treasure
 bay. New lagoons, passes and bayous
 were constantly being born. They start
 usually as shallow lagoons and washed
 away by the waves and tides, then
 graduate into a bay, and finally into a bayou.
 On the other hand, points like the is
 lands were being gradually washed
 away. Point Chicot, it was testified,- had almost completely disappeared.
 Where it extended ten years ago was
 marked by a few trunks of trees rising
 above the water.
 | The disappearance of the forests
 (which formerly grew through the coast
 or prairie region is one of the marke features of the coastal change and largely accounts for it. The trees for lmerly gave the land some stability and Iprotected it from the ocean. The ocean
 uprooted these guardians and then de-
 stroyed the land. Far out in the Gulf et,,
 be found, and any excavations made in the bayous and bays bring to light lthousands of stumps, which show that Ithe land must have been densely wood-
 led It is treeless now, denuded by the
 storms.
 The Chandeleurs, originally wooded,
 are now bare of everything but a few
 bushes. Many witnesses testified that lthey remember an abundance of trees in this section. All are gone. The cy- lpress at Point Chicot were the last to
 resist the ocean. They are now well
 out to sea, rising like specters above 1.-the ocean. What is true of Point Chi
 cot is true of Point Comfort and all
 other points-they are being rapidly
 ground down.
 The witnesses reported that on every visit they made to the St. Bernard Icountry they found it different. They could only tell of the changes made in the last twenty-five years, for no wit ness could be found who had visited that section previous to 1870.
 1 The popular doctrine that the Missis- ls sippi is building itself out into the Gulf
 with the immense mass of mud it car ries down from all parts of the valley l is well substantiated, but nature has counter-acting agency in the Gul which at irregular intervals washes away and destroys the land built up by lthe father of waters.-New Orleans 1 TimeS-Democrat.