New-York tribune., 1907-06-23
BY III. s. TreZevant.

BY day and by night. at this time of year.
three thousand keen-eyed men. with repeating
rifles in the hollows Of their arms, are cease
lessly pacing two sinuous. winding trails that
are sometimes in plain view of one another. at
others miles apart; yet one is as like its fellow
as pea is Ike its mate. and each the watch
ers are watching for crawfsh and the June
floods They are the queerest trails in the
world that these armed men tramp. and they
follow the summit of the oldest mounds in the
world. for surely nowhere else will three thou
sand armed men pace half many miles in
dav and in darkness watching crawfsh, and
stalking their lives and the lives of their friends
their neighbors. their loved ones and even the
lives Of utter strangers. on the carefulness Of
their scrutiny But these mounds with the long
and curving tops are the twin levees of the great
Mississippi Valley. they follow the rivers banks
for more than fourteen hundred miles. and they
run in the olden time Egyptian and Biblical
sevens Of the ancient priests and mysteries Each
IS seven feet across the crown. seven times seven
through the base and a little more than seven
hundred miles long.
In the golden summer time they serve as
beaten path from district district, landing to
landing. and county 10 county. But now when
the fierce, hungry. rapacious Mississippi replete
10 bursting with the blood of the mountain tor
rents and filed with the wanderust of spring.
seeks to gather into its annihilating embrace the
lfesaving landsaving mounds. and sweep on
the earth the homes behind them, in its raging.
recurrent fits Of madness. now the watchers
are out. and they are watching-1or cra"nsh
and the foods.
This is not a joke. II is grim. deadly earnest
for when the river floods cruel, tawny tide
dashes the yellow spume far up the grass mat
ted slopes and glares over the leVee tops with
sharklike CLEAN in its eye of foam at the fair
fields stretching away beyond. then 90 the
watchers pace away the miles, and with micro
ecopic vision scan every foot of earth and r1Ver
for the tiny holes that the crawfsh bores ana
the queer looking air bubbles that float 10 the
surface and show where the little crustacean is
at work TO do harm And If not stopped forth
with that hole. no bigger than a rife barrel may
IN few hours wash away county.
Il is not against these little freshwater
shrinaps that the Winchesters are carried ani
used, however but for protection from foes Of
different sorts-one open, the other secret. The
first Of these is the steamboat, usually big,
sternwheeI towboat. the wash OF whose waves
against the levees is worse than a storm. The
owners and crews Of the local freight and pas
senger packets well know the damage these
waves can do. and seldom run near the levee,
or. II they do, always under slow DELL Tot
their interests are at one with the planters by
whose trade they live. But many pilots Of the
big Pittsburg coal towboats care nothing for the
leyees or the people behind them, and these peo-
pie have ascertained by long experience that the
only message ever needed by such boat crews IS
the one that is sent through the pilot house
sash written on Winchester bullet. That sort
elvavs meets with prompt. If not courteous, at
tention and the pilot loses little time IN hand
ling the wire rope attached to his slow bell
Here is n illustration clipped from local paper
ct the time Of the big water Of 1903, when every
breast was filled with dread lest the heavily
burdened levees might let go, as some devastat-
;ngly did:
SHOTGUN PROTECTION.
Word was received from Dyersburg by telephone
vesterday afternoon that the planters living near
Eale's Point on the Mississippi River had banded
together TO shoot at the first steamer that at
tempted 70 approach their side Of the river. and
70 shoot 10 kin those IN charge Of the offending
boat
The steamboat, however wars against the
levees openly and only because Of sheer tndlfrer-
ence to the rights Of others. The foe TO be
feared the mean, sly, insidious foe, compared TO
whom the spy OF the wartime stands out in bold
relief as a hero: despised we'll as dreaded and
detested more than either; the foe for whom
those rifles are held almost at a perpetual
ready" is the man who cuts the levee. Even
in the opinion OF those living far from the dan
gers Of foods there is only one palliation and
no excuse for so dastardly deed II may well
be that brooding the fearful peril that
hourly rises with the rising tide, threatening at
anv moment to rob him Of his rooftree and his
little all listening with sinking heart and SICK
enng soul 10 the cruel lap-lap-lapping OF the