The weekly Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1911-1922, 1912-04-11
.DESOLATION IN
WAKE Of FLOOD
Tennessee Land Owners Work
ing to Hold Back River.
COTTON GROUND UNDER WATER
Mail Service Being Carried on Through
Emergency Channels from Ohio
River to Rocky Mountains
MANY Towns issolsted.

Memphis, Tenn, April S.-The flood
crest, rapidly going south, is leaving
behind it a wake of desolation which
will cost planters millions of dollars
and leave thousands homeless. For
fifty miles below Memphis the land
owners and renters are still desper-
ately working to hold back the rushing
river, but with scant success.
From six to Ten feet of water foods
the fertile ST. Francis basin, the
source of one-tenth of the entire cot
ton crop of the world II will be days
before this water will have run off,
and days before the river will have
lowered to a sufficient depth to allow
the planters to rebuild their levees.
Interruption of the mail service is
the latest problem which confronts
both the residents of the valley and
the government officials. From the
Ohio river to the Rocky mountains, as
showing the greatest scope of this rec
ord flood, the mail service is being
carried on through emergency chan
nels, and in many districts no mail
has been received since Tuesday.
Most of the cities and towns in the
Mississippi valley are isolated so far
as mail communication is concerned,
and the situation in the lower valley
continues to grow more serious. Hen
~ NJ Robinson, railway mail superin-
tendent at New Orleans. reported by
wire that the volume of water now
moving out of the Mississippi in the
lower river is unprecedented and fur
Their trouble is expected before it has
passed off into the Gulf of Mexico.
]. NJ. Mastin, superintendent at
| Omaha. reports the same conditions
| with ice gorges in the northwest tribu-
taries, the Loup. Platte and Elkhorn
rivers.
Short end trains and substitute mail
trains are making short connections
| throughout the valley. In some places
pouches of mail are being carried
across open places in the trackage by
cable from one short end train to an
other.
Postmaster General Hitchcock H.
sued instructions to every railway
mail superintendent in the valley to
use every effort to keep the mails NOV.
ing and avoid so far as possible con.
gestion at any junction or big hand.
ling point, so that they can be moved
quickly when regular traffic is re
sumed.
At st. Louis the food situation
shows some Improvement The stage
of the river here was 295 feet, fall
of one and two-tenths inches since
Saturday, but the upper Mississippi
river is rising again and the crest of
the Ohio river food is above Evans.
vile, Ind.
The state Of the river at Quincy, ILL.,,
is 1875 feet, a rise of two-tenths in
twenty-four hours, and the MISSISSIPPI
ri above Quincy Is rising. This ad
ditional high water will reach Cairo
and Memphis the latter part of the
week
Reports from Evansville are that
the Ohio river is still rising. A severe
wind storm which swept the lower
Ohio valley and a heavy rain added
to the danger menacing flood points
below that city. Conditions along the
Wabash and White rivers are hourly
growing worse.
New Madrid, Mo-, reports a fall OF
about five inches and no new dangers
menacing. The work of relief there
is progressing.
telephone message from Helena, Ark,
that the Mississippi levee at Modoc
thirty miles below Helena, had col
lapsed.
Helena reports later that the levee
has broken in three places within a
radius of sixty miles south of there on
the Arkansas side of the Mississippi
flooding thousands of acres of farming
lands.