Mississippi is a very muddy river, and when it overflows it spreads this
mud over the country, in much the same fashion that the Nile does, and
with the same result of fertilizing and enriching the soil.

All swift waters wash away some portion of their bed in their flow, and
carry it along with them in their journey to the sea.

The Mississippi in its thousand-mile course carries a vast amount of this
stolen earth, so much indeed that every year it deposits in the Gulf of
Mexico an amount of mud which would make a pile one mile square and 268
feet high.

[Illustration]

This enormous yearly deposit is literally filling up the Gulf, and in the
ages to come dry land and a new country will be found where the waters of
the Gulf now lie.

Every year the Mississippi brings down enough earth with it to help it
move its mouth 338 feet farther out into the sea, and every year it builds
on to its delta, which now contains thousands of square miles!

You can understand that the angry flood of such a powerful river as this
must be a very serious matter. For a distance of nearly twenty miles in
Arkansas, levees have given way, and thousands of acres of land have been
flooded; the waters sweeping away the homes, drowning the cattle, and
compelling the people to seek the points above the angry waters, and wait
in the hope of relief-boats coming to save them.

In other parts of the country through which the river flows, special