New Britain herald., 1927-05-17

city that was" dramatized that dis aster.)
 BY WILL IRWIN
 Written for The United Press.
 Copyright, 1927,
 by the United Press.
 Alexandria, La. May IT (UP)- The last of the Big Bend levees. protecting a good half of the rich Louisiana cane sugar belt from the angry drunken Mississippi. yester- day as we'll as what Is called the Big Bend levee proper. correspond ing to any army's front line trench, have fallen.
 The levee of Bayou Des Glaises, the second line, went first.
 It-was my tragic fortune to be passing in coast guard launch . when the last of them burst and crumbled. And what I saw in the course of that crowded afternoon was one little. typical segment of the greatest disasters. except war alone. which has ever descended on tho United States.
 Came From New Jersey.
 Our coast guard crew-rushed boat and all. from New Jersey by special train-put. off at Mansura, from what seemed to be a steep river bank until two weeks ago. As a matter of fact, this was railroad cut at temporary wharf, some 10 or Is miles from the Mississippi. made by anchoring barge. Coast guard cutters were landing refugees taken from flooded porches. from knolls, from housetops. Half of them were coal black Negro field hands or cotton farmers. The whites, transported by separate barges, were Acadian farming fami- lies. chattering among themselves in a thick. unfamiliar French dia- lect. One old Negro, a cripple, was very, very ill. Two men supported him while his family walled about him.
 A Red Gross doctor pushed his way through the crowd. The old mans head was bobbing and wob- bling. He seemed nearly gone: too feeble to be moved. the doctor would have said. but the boatmen had taken him from a house top, so there was no choice.
 Two Acadian girls were crying as though their hearts would break for the reason I suppose, that there home was gone, which was reason enough.
 An older brother. his hand on their shoulders, tried silently to comfort them. A younger brother. who had been trying to bite back the tears, shuddenly broke down and joined in the family wailing.
 Boat For Animals.
 Against the wharf bumped clumsy flatboat. its deck surround etAby a high fence. It was loaded with horses and mules.
 On tho bank above, half of the autom obiles in Mansura, mobllized for the emergency. were loading refugees and their scant baggage and transporting them to the high land camp where the Red Cross forces were throwing up tents.
 Before us as we showed off lay a lake of orange-colored water. which stretched. whenever you could catch the distance. to the horizon. Into 1t sank the line of telegraph poles which emerged from the cut: they dipped lower and lower until only their tips appeared. These marked the submerged line of the Texas & Pacific Railway.
 As we gathered speed and shot southward, submerged country seemed to pass us in procession. At first came pleasant little Cajan farmhouses, the water barely up to their front porches. see that here and there the holly-hocks of their gardens thrust pink spikes above the yellow flood. Further on stood a hamlet of or 10 houses. and one tiny church on a knoll. The church stood bravely out of water: the lower houses lay summerged to their upper windows. Then the roof of substantial farmhouse with out buildings, only the caves and parts of the upper windows showing; then, finally only roofs; even at last, only shadows under the water. Below us lay some of the richest farms. acre for acre. in the United States. where thrifty Acadian fami- lies make comfortable livings and pile up completeness on from forty to eighty acres.