“ The seeing eyes of the river men see the ugliness of a coming flood-wave in the look of a crossing or reach. Again, they catch the gentleness of the slacking and loafing waters by the wash of an eddy under a wide sand-bar. ”

“ Everything is made as ready as can be against the possibility of the levee breaking—against the dreaded crevasse. Men walk the levee, Winchester in hand, along regular sentry beats day and night, watching and listening for the noise of flowing water. ”

“ Until the white man at last directed his analytical faculties toward the investigation of the unwritten code of laws governing the rise and fall, the sweep and send, the flow and rush of the torrent, expression of the river wonders found egress in myths and speculations, traditions and romance, as those who have read the lives of Hennepin, Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, and lesser men, may remember. ”

“ If a little stream once breaks through the levee, it will quickly wear away a hole, and the hole, if not filled in time, may widen to a break half a mile wide, through which the flood waters would flow, inundating and killing countless cotton plants, besides tearing up and ruining square miles of land.
Muskrats, crawfish, rotten sticks, and men are the makers of crevasses. Where the river flows between two levees, and the high water is coming higher, threatening both east and west bottoms, human nature says, "Thou shalt die ere I die!" ”

“ White men have fenced off with dirt hundreds of miles of bottom-lands, seeking to protect them from the overflow; but back in the swamps to this day, one finds the people building their homes on the high places. Some even keep skiffs, rafts, and houseboats at their cotton plantations in order to have an ark of refuge when a levee breaks or is topped by the waters.
People who live far from the Mississippi banks, in the depths of the swamplands, watch the water-flow in their nearest bayous or rivers or delta streams with anxiety born of long and unhappy experience. ”

“ The Indians who knew the Mississippi River before the advent of Joliet and LaSalle named the vast phenomenon "The Father of Waters." White men who live upon the river or along its swampland banks now know whence came that expressive term. After one has been with the stream long enough for its novelty to have worn away, acquaintance and proximity do not diminish the wonder aroused by the huge torrent. ”

“ When the water comes close to the levee-top, and the levee protects a thickly populated lowland, sacks are filled with dirt and piled on the levee. If hands are scarce, the white men get on their horses, ride out and herd the stout negroes, and perhaps miles of levee are banked higher by these not-too-willing workers. Thus at Helena, Arkansas, one spring, the citizens of that city held back the flood that was two feet higher than the permanent levee-top, by piling on earth-filled sacks.
In whatever direction one may turn his attention, the Mississippi overshadows all the bottom-lands. ”

“ A man from a hill country has a vision of a massy height of land, with gullies and steep places and far views. But that ridge which is historic in the annals of Louisiana rises about three feet eight inches above the surrounding lowlands. ”

“ They measure their hills and valleys with six-inch rules in the lower regions of the bottoms. I was going down Atchafayala a few years ago, when an old fisherman asked me to take particular notice of a highland on the left bank half a mile down stream. ”

“ O n the 24th, the water was .28 feet higher, the cross section was 1500 feet greater, but the discharge was 43,000 cubic feet less per second because the velocity was .25 feet slower per second.
The river is never twice alike. There are a dozen different velocities for each tenth of an inch gauge-reading. Sometimes the river rises fast, sometimes slowly. It may drop twice as fast at one time as at another. Sometimes the flow seems to "bank up" in a bend, and again the current sucks along apparently unresisted. ”