The
national government, however, has appropriated to the purpose of
facilitating inland navigation certain sums which have been used in doing
this work, especially in the Mississippi Valley. There are now 1,538 miles
of levees on both sides of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau to the
passes. These levees, of course, are still inadequate to the security of
the planters against these inundations. Carrying 406 million tons of mud a
year, the river becomes a dangerous stream subject to change, abandoning
its old bed to cut for itself a new channel, transferring property from
one State to another, isolating cities and leaving once useful levees
marooned in the landscape like old Indian mounds or overgrown
intrenchments.[5]
This valley has, therefore, been frequently visited with disasters which
have often set the population in motion. The first disastrous floods came
in 1858 and 1859, breaking many of the levees, the destruction of which
was practically completed by the floods of 1865 and 1869. There is an
annual rise in the stream, but since 1874 this river system has fourteen
times devastated large areas of this section with destructive floods. The
property in this district depreciated in value to the extent of about 400
millions in ten years. Farmers from this section, therefore, have at times
moved west with foreigners to take up public lands.
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