New Britain herald., 1927-05-18
GRAPHIC PICTURE
 0f FLOOD AREAS
Hil h1h Noted Writer, Dc sa -
 sclibes Conditions
{By WILL IRWIN,

>SS" SAAS@ASS 4In.s nay 10 'OI
 The great levee at Morganza
 some 100 miles up the insane Mis-
 sissippi from New Orleans, still
 holds. Three times in the past 4s
 hours Secretary Hoover's official
 party has received false report that Morganza was cracking and bulging preliminary to its fall. Each time the army engineers have flashed back the report: ''Still holding"
 It sounds like the taciturn re- port of . commander at an outpost to his general of division. And this seems to me an apt comparison all along the line.
 Up there an army of strong men
 army engineers, national guards
 men. laborers working for more than their hire, farmer volunteers have for . week struggled In sticky heat to the limit of human endurance. Even in the continuous four-day attacks of the late war, men never worked harder.
 @ Soldiers of Peace
 Now and then one of these red eyed. staggering soldiers of peace collapses where he stands. His com rades move him out of the way; when he can move again he takes a dip in the river and staggers back to the line. A rest of few min- utes: for that leak is stopped. Then somewhere 8 sentry along this disputed line finds an oozing and bubbling in the bank. The en- emy is charging again. His front line has begun to break through. The army springs to action again. iMorganza levee guards bend of the river. Against it the flood rushes head-on. Two hundred feet wide at its base. 1t lies, neverthe- less. on a treacherous foundation laced with shifting quicksands.
 It protects the eastern half of the Sugar Bowl" This low valley. rich with cane and diversified crops, inhabited by nearly 100000 people. runs 75 miles straight to the in- .dented Gulf shore. Down it's cen ter runs the Atchafalaya river. in prehistoric times the main chan mel of the Mississippi. The break at the Big Bend, one episode of which l saw last Saturday, has doomed the whole valley from that river westward. Already it was swollen to its levee top with over- flow of the Red river.
 The new rise of water is beating against the right bank. Already some of the damage which a break at Morganza might cause has been done. Yesterday. trying to be con- servative. estimated that the break at the Big Bend. and Bayou Des Glaises would leave 10000 more persons homeless. was ridiculously conservative. The official estimate runs to 105.000.
 Spectacular Sights.
 I have travelled by train across part of the doomed country. First, there were seven or eight miles of land under water from another overflow. It was a spectacular cross ing. We crept at three miles an hour. with the water. at times, lap ping the steps of the Pullman cars. Beside us chugged and popped hatboat which played searchlight over the waters. Two men with long poles coaxed and prodded floating logs, even floating domestic furniture, away from the wheels.
 Experience in this singular am phibious railroading has proved that the greatest danger to navigation is driftwood under the wheels. Beauti- ful in the moonlight and the search light rose bayou forests with their streamers of Spanish moss, and over all the yellow, oily surface bloomed the mauve spikes of water hyactnth.
 .. Then would appear clearing, and ! sight to which we have grown al- most indinterently familiar. Houses. barns and sheds flooded to the caves; pens. furniture, buggy tops and loose gates floating lazily away from home. A cut. marking high, safe ground, and We traversed 10 miles of rich farming country inter- spersed with little settlements
 The Cajan.
 The cajan IS good farmer and keeps things neat about the place. As the towns and farmhouses shot past us. they showed only one ab- normal aspect. At 9 o'clock at night. every window was lighted. The cajan were sitting up for the dis lster. We. who had been boring over he map with any army engineer, knew that the vanguard of calamity night arrive before sunset Tuesday. 1
 Ten. or IS miles above was creep l ng on a rippling. tapping wave to ipread thin sheet of water over l pastures and barnyards and new { ;rops; hour by hour for days on ! md, this would rise until it touched [ he telegraph wires.
 Watching this pretty and peace | ul countryside with background . ,f the Big Bend country in ones . was a little like watching Itrong, well, stalwart man walking 0 the gallows. The tragedy was ,oming and nothing could stop 1t.
 The whites of this region 6are mostly Acadians or "Cajans;" Evan :elines people. Sturdy, trhifty. aloof nd peculiar, they remain ill many f their ways Frenchmen of the ighteenth century. Some of the lder people speak only Acadian,
 curious dialect of old French, in to modern French ian. They have been showing in his crisis one curious French trait. perplexity of the French govern- lent in the late war was the ten ency of. the peasants to hang on , his own cottage until the enemy