THESE dry details are of importance in one particular.

They give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi'soddest peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time.

If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder,it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average sectionof the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hundred milesstretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New Orleans,the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief straight bithere and there at wide intervals. The two hundred-mile stretchfrom Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so crooked,that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.

The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deephorseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to getashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a coupleof hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow,at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again.

When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantationis back in the country, and therefore of inferior value,has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrowneck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it,and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit,the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch,and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling itsvalue), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation findsitself away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse aroundit will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten milesof it, and down goes its value to a fourth of its former worth.

Watches are kept on those narrow necks, at needful times,and if a man happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them,the chances are all against his ever having another opportunity tocut a ditch.

Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.

Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was onlyhalf a mile across, in its narrowest place. You could walk acrossthere in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey around the capeon a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing.

In 1722 the river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed,and thus shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way itshortened itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699.

Below Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fiftyyears ago, I think). This shortened the river twenty-eight miles.

In our day, if you travel by river from the southernmost of thesethree cut-offs to the northernmost, you go only seventy miles.

To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-six years ago, one hadto go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!--shortening of eighty-eightmiles in that trifling distance. At some forgotten time in the past,cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84;and at Hale's Point. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,seventy-seven miles.

Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made atHurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,which shortened the river ten miles or more.

Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelvehundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.

It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.

It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It haslost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only ninehundred and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on'

to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurredin a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far futureby what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!

Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!

Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great things,but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the LowerMississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.

That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.

Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a millionyears ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwardsof one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck outover the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same tokenany person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from nowthe Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutualboard of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.

One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a triflinginvestment of fact.

When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches Ihave been speaking of, it is time for the people thereaboutsto move. The water cleaves the banks away like a knife.

By the time the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide,the calamity is as good as accomplished, for no power on earthcan stop it now. When the width has reached a hundred yards,the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.

The current flowing around the bend traveled formerlyonly five miles an hour; now it is tremendously increasedby the shortening of the distance. I was on board the firstboat that tried to go through the cut-off at American Bend,but we did not get through. It was toward midnight, and a wildnight it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain.

It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was makingabout fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteenwas the best our boat could do, even in tolerably slack water,therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the cut-off. However,Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he kept on trying.

The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was aboutas swift as the current out in the middle; so we wouldgo flying up the shore like a lightning express train,get on a big head of steam, and 'stand by for a surge'

when we struck the current that was whirling by the point.

But all our preparations were useless. The instant the current hitus it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the forecastle,and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keephis feet. The next instant we were away down the river,clawing with might and main to keep out of the woods.

We tried the experiment four times. I stood on the forecastlecompanion way to see. It was astonishing to observe howsuddenly the boat would spin around and turn tail the momentshe emerged from the eddy and the current struck her nose.

The sounding concussion and the quivering would have beenabout the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank.

Under the lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabinsand the goodly acres tumble into the river; and the crash theymade was not a bad effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around,we only missed a house about twenty feet, that had a light burningin the window; and in the same instant that house went overboard.

Nobody could stay on our forecastle; the water swept acrossit in a torrent every time we plunged athwart the current.

At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two milesbelow the cut-off; all the count............