Principles of Geology Part 20

Strabo's description of the delta is so inapplicable to its present configuration, as to attest a complete alteration in the physical features of the country since the Augustan age. It appears, however, that the head of the delta, or the point at which it begins to ramify, has remained unaltered since the time of Pliny, for he states that the Rhone divided itself at Arles into two arms. This is the case at present; one of the branches, the western, being now called Le Pet.i.t Rhone, which is again subdivided before entering the Mediterranean. The advance of the base of the delta, in the last eighteen centuries, is demonstrated by many curious antiquarian monuments. The most striking of these is the great and unnatural detour of the old Roman road from Ugernum to Beziers (_Boeterrae_) which went round by Nismes (_Nemausus_). It is clear that, when this was first constructed, it was impossible to pa.s.s in a direct line, as now, across the delta, and that either the sea or marshes intervened in a tract now consisting of terra firma.[346] Astruc also remarks, that all the places on low lands, lying to the north of the old Roman road between Nismes and Beziers, have names of Celtic origin, evidently given to them by the first inhabitants of the country; whereas, the places lying south of that road, towards the sea, have names of Latin derivation, and were clearly founded after the Roman language had been introduced.

Another proof, also, of the great extent of land which has come into existence since the Romans conquered and colonized Gaul, is derived from the fact, that the Roman writers never mention the thermal waters of Balaruc in the delta, although they were well acquainted with those of Aix, and others still more distant, and attached great importance to them, as they invariably did to all hot springs. The waters of Balaruc, therefore, must have formerly issued under the sea--a common phenomenon on the borders of the Mediterranean; and on the advance of the delta they continued to flow out through the new deposits.

Among the more direct proofs of the increase of land, we find that Mese, described under the appellation of Mesua Collis by Pomponius Mela,[347]

and stated by him to be nearly an island, is now far inland. Notre Dame des Ports, also, was a harbor in 898, but is now a league from the sh.o.r.e. Psalmodi was an island in 815, and is now two leagues from the sea. Several old lines of towers and sea-marks occur at different distances from the present coast, all indicating the successive retreat of the sea, for each line has in its turn become useless to mariners; which may well be conceived, when we state that the Tower of Tignaux, erected on the sh.o.r.e so late as the year 1737, is already a mile remote from it.[348]

By the confluence of the Rhone and the currents of the Mediterranean, driven by winds from the south, sand-bars are often formed across the mouths of the river; by these means considerable s.p.a.ces become divided off from the sea, and subsequently from the river also, when it shifts its channels of efflux. As some of these lagoons are subject to the occasional ingress of the river when flooded, and of the sea during storms, they are alternately salt and fresh. Others, after being filled with salt water, are often lowered by evaporation till they become more salt than the sea; and it has happened, occasionally, that a considerable precipitate of muriate of soda has taken place in these natural salterns. During the latter part of Napoleon's career, when the excise laws were enforced with extreme rigor, the police was employed to prevent such salt from being used. The fluviatile and marine sh.e.l.ls inclosed in these small lakes often live together in brackish water; but the uncongenial nature of the fluid usually produces a dwarfish size, and sometimes gives rise to strange varieties in form and color.

Captain Smyth in his survey of the coast of the Mediterranean, found the sea opposite the mouth of the Rhone, to deepen gradually from four to forty fathoms, within a distance of six or seven miles, over which the discolored fresh water extends; so that the inclination of the new deposits must be too slight to be appreciable in such an extent of section as a geologist usually obtains in examining ancient formations.

When the wind blew from the southwest, the ships employed in the survey were obliged to quit their moorings; and when they returned, the new sand-banks in the delta were found covered over with a great abundance of marine sh.e.l.ls. By this means, we learn how occasional beds of drifted marine sh.e.l.ls may become interstratified with freshwater strata at a river's mouth.

_Stony nature of its deposits._--That a great proportion, at least, of the new deposit in the delta of the Rhone consists of _rock_, and not of loose incoherent matter, is perfectly ascertained. In the Museum at Montpelier is a cannon taken up from the sea near the mouth of the river, imbedded in a crystalline calcareous rock. Large ma.s.ses, also, are continually taken up of an arenaceous rock, cemented by calcareous matter, including mult.i.tudes of broken sh.e.l.ls of recent species. The observations lately made on this subject corroborate the former statement of Marsilli, that the earthy deposits of the coast of Languedoc form a stony substance, for which reason he ascribes a certain bituminous, saline, and glutinous nature to the substances brought down with sand by the Rhone.[349] If the number of mineral springs charged with carbonate of lime which fall into the Rhone and its feeders in different parts of France be considered, we shall feel no surprise at the lapidification of the newly deposited sediment in this delta. It should be remembered, that the fresh water introduced by rivers being lighter than the water of the sea, floats over the latter, and remains upon the surface for a considerable distance. Consequently it is exposed to as much evaporation as the waters of a lake; and the area over which the river-water is spread, at the junction of great rivers and the sea, may well be compared, in point of extent, to that of considerable lakes.

Now, it is well known, that so great is the quant.i.ty of water carried off by evaporation in some lakes, that it is nearly equal to the water flowing in; and in some inland seas, as the Caspian, it is quite equal.

We may, therefore, well suppose that, in cases where a strong current does not interfere, the greater portion not only of the matter held mechanically in suspension, but of that also which is in chemical solution, may be precipitated at no great distance from the sh.o.r.e. When these finer ingredients are extremely small in quant.i.ty, they may only suffice to supply crustaceous animals, corals, and marine plants, with the earthy particles necessary for their secretions; but whenever it is in excess (as generally happens if the basin of a river lie partly in a district of active or extinct volcanoes), then will solid deposits be formed, and the sh.e.l.ls will at once be included in a rocky ma.s.s.

_Coast of Asia Minor._--Examples of the advance of the land upon the sea are afforded by the southern coast of Asia Minor. Admiral Sir F.

Beaufort has pointed out in his survey the great alterations effected since the time of Strabo, where havens are filled up, islands joined to the mainland, and where the whole continent has increased many miles in extent. Strabo himself, on comparing the outline of the coast in his time with its ancient state, was convinced, like our countryman, that it had gained very considerably upon the sea. The new-formed strata of Asia Minor consist _of stone_, not of loose incoherent materials. Almost all the streamlets and rivers, like many of those in Tuscany and the south of Italy, hold abundance of carbonate of lime in solution, and precipitate travertin, or sometimes bind together the sand and gravel into solid sandstones and conglomerates; every delta and sand-bar thus acquires solidity, which often prevents streams from forcing their way through them, so that their mouths are constantly changing their position.[350]

_Delta of the Nile._--That Egypt was "the gift of the Nile," was the opinion of her priests before the time of Herodotus; and Rennell observes, that the "configuration and composition of the low lands leave no room for doubt that the sea once washed the base of the rocks on which the pyramids of Memphis stand, the _present_ base of which is washed by the inundation of the Nile, at an elevation of 70 or 80 feet above the Mediterranean. But when we attempt to carry back our ideas to the remote period when the foundation of the delta was first laid, we are lost in the contemplation of so vast an interval of time."[351]

Herodotus observes, "that the country round Memphis seemed formerly to have been an arm of the sea gradually filled by the Nile, in the same manner as the Meander, Achelous, and other streams, had formed deltas.

Egypt, therefore, he says, like the Red Sea, was once a long narrow bay, and both gulfs were separated by a small neck of land. If the Nile, he adds, should by any means have an issue into the Arabian Gulf, it might choke it up with earth in 20,000 or even, perhaps, in 10,000 years; and why may not the Nile have filled a still greater gulf with mud in the s.p.a.ce of time which has pa.s.sed before our age?"[352]

The distance between Memphis and the most prominent part of the delta in a straight line north and south, is about 100 geographical miles; the length of the base of the delta is more than 200 miles if we follow the coast between the ancient extreme eastern and western arms; but as these are now blocked up, that part only of Lower Egypt which intervenes between the Rosetta and Damietta branches, is usually called the delta, the coast line of which is about 90 miles in length. The bed of the river itself, says Sir J. G. Wilkinson, undergoes a gradual increase of elevation varying in different places, and always lessening in proportion as the river approaches the sea. "This increase of elevation in perpendicular height is much smaller in Lower than in Upper Egypt, and in the delta it diminishes still more; so that, according to an approximate calculation, the land about Elephantine, or the first cataract, lat. 24 5', has been raised nine feet in 1700 years; at Thebes, lat. 25 43', about seven feet; and at Heliopolis and Cairo, lat. 30, about five feet ten inches. At Rosetta and the mouths of the Nile, lat. 31 30', the diminution in the perpendicular thickness of the deposit is lessened in a much greater decreasing ratio than in the straitened valley of Central and Upper Egypt, owing to the great extent, east and west, over which the inundation spreads."[353]

For this reason the alluvial deposit does not cause the delta to protrude rapidly into the sea, although some ancient cities are now a mile or more inland, and the mouths of the Nile, mentioned by the earlier geographers, have been many of them silted up, and the outline of the coast entirely changed.

The bed of the Nile always keeps pace with the general elevation of the soil, and the banks of this river, like those of the Mississippi and its tributaries (see p. 265), are much higher than the flat land at a distance, so that they are seldom covered during the highest inundations. In consequence of the gradual rise of the river's bed, the annual flood is constantly spreading over a wider area, and the alluvial soil encroaches on the desert, covering, to the depth of six or seven feet, the base of statues and temples which the waters never reached 3000 years ago. Although the sands of the Libyan deserts have in some places been drifted into the valley of the Nile, yet these aggressions, says Wilkinson, are far more than counterbalanced by the fertilizing effect of the water which now reaches farther inland towards the desert, so that the number of square miles of arable soil is greater at present than at any previous period.

_Mud of the Nile._--On comparing the different a.n.a.lyses which have been published of this mud, it will be found that it contains a large quant.i.ty of argillaceous matter, with much peroxide of iron, some carbonate of lime, and a small proportion of carbonate of magnesia. The latest and most careful a.n.a.lysis by M. La.s.saigne shows a singularly close resemblance in the proportions of the ingredients of silica, alumina, iron, carbon, lime, and magnesia, and those observed in ordinary mica;[354] but a much larger quant.i.ty of calcareous matter is sometimes present.

In many places, as at Cairo, where artificial excavations have been made, or where the river has undermined its banks, the mud is seen to be thinly stratified, the upper part of each annual layer consisting of earth of a lighter color than the lower, and the whole separating easily from the deposit of the succeeding year. These annual layers are variable in thickness; but, according to the calculations of Girard and Wilkinson, the mean annual thickness of a layer at Cairo cannot exceed that of a sheet of thin pasteboard, and a stratum of two or three feet must represent the acc.u.mulation of a thousand years.

The depth of the Mediterranean is about twelve fathoms at a small distance from the sh.o.r.e of the delta; it afterwards increases gradually to 50, and then suddenly descends to 380 fathoms, which is, perhaps, the original depth of the sea where it has not been rendered shallower by fluviatile matter. We learn from Lieut. Newbold that nothing but the finest and lightest ingredients reach the Mediterranean, where he has observed the sea discolored by them to the distance of 40 miles from the sh.o.r.e.[355] The small progress of the delta in the last 2000 years affords, perhaps, no measure for estimating its rate of growth when it was an inland bay, and had not yet protruded itself beyond the coast-line of the Mediterranean. A powerful current now sweeps along the sh.o.r.es of Africa, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the prominent convexity of Egypt, the western side of which is continually the prey of the waves; so that not only are fresh accessions of land checked, but ancient parts of the delta are carried away. By this cause, Canopus and some other towns have been overwhelmed; but to this subject I shall again refer when speaking of tides and currents.

CHAPTER XVIII.

REPRODUCTIVE EFFECTS OF RIVERS--_continued_.

Deltas formed under the influence of tides--Basin and delta of the Mississippi--Alluvial plain--River-banks and bluffs--Curves of the river--Natural rafts and snags--New lakes, and effects of earthquakes--Antiquity of the delta--Delta of the Ganges and Brahmapootra--Head of the delta and Sunderbunds--Islands formed and destroyed--Crocodiles--Amount of fluviatile sediment in the water--Artesian boring at Calcutta--Proofs of subsidence--Age of the delta--Convergence of deltas--Origin of existing deltas not contemporaneous--Grouping of strata and stratification in deltas--Conglomerates--Constant interchange of land and sea.

In the last chapter several examples were given of the deltas of inland seas, where the influence of the tides is almost imperceptible. We may next consider those marine or oceanic deltas, where the tides play an important part in the dispersion of fluviatile sediment, as in the Gulf of Mexico, where they exert a moderate degree of force, and then in the Bay of Bengal, where they are extremely powerful. In regard to estuaries, which Rennel termed "negative deltas," they will be treated of more properly when our attention is specially turned to the operations of tides and currents (chapters 20, 21, and 22). In this case, instead of the land gaining on the sea at the river's mouth, the tides penetrate far inland beyond the general coast-line.

BASIN AND DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

_Alluvial plain._--The hydrographical basin of the Mississippi displays, on the grandest scale, the action of running water on the surface of a vast continent. This magnificent river rises nearly in the forty-ninth parallel of north lat.i.tude, and flows to the Gulf of Mexico in the twenty-ninth--a course, including its meanders, of more than three thousand miles. It pa.s.ses from a cold climate, where the hunter obtains his furs and peltries, traverses the temperate lat.i.tudes, and discharges its waters into the sea in the region of rice, the cotton plant, and the sugar-cane. From near its mouth at the Balize a steamboat may ascend for 2000 miles with scarcely any perceptible difference in the width of the river. Several of its tributaries, the Red River, the Arkansas, the Missouri, the Ohio, and others, would be regarded elsewhere as of the first importance, and, taken together, are navigable for a distance many times exceeding that of the main stream. No river affords a more striking ill.u.s.tration of the law before mentioned, that an augmentation of volume does not occasion a proportional increase of surface, nay, is even sometimes attended with a narrowing of the channel. The Mississippi is half a mile wide at its junction with the Missouri, the latter being also of equal width; yet the united waters have only, from their confluence to the mouth of the Ohio, a medial width of about half a mile. The junction of the Ohio seems also to produce no increase, but rather a decrease, of surface.[356] The St. Francis, White, Arkansas, and Red rivers are also absorbed by the main stream with scarcely any apparent increase of its width, although here and there it expands to a breadth of 1, or even to 2 miles. On arriving at New Orleans, it is somewhat less than half a mile wide. Its depth there is very variable, the greatest at high water being 168 feet. The mean rate at which the whole body of water flows is variously estimated; according to Mr.

Forshey the mean velocity of the current at the surface, somewhat exceeds 2 miles an hour when the water is at a mean height. For 300 miles above New Orleans the distance measured by the winding river is about twice as great as the distance in a right line. For the first 100 miles from the mouth the rate of fall is 180 inch per mile, for the second hundred 2 inches, for the third 230, for the fourth 257.

The alluvial plain of the Mississippi begins to be of great width below Cape Girardeau, 50 miles above the junction of the Ohio. At this junction it is about 50 miles broad, south of which it contracts to about 30 miles at Memphis, expands again to 80 miles at the mouth of the White River, and then, after various contractions and expansions, protrudes beyond the general coast-line, in a large delta, about 90 miles in width, from N. E. to S. W. Mr. Forshey estimates the area of the great plain as above defined at 31,200 square miles, with a circ.u.mference of about 3000 miles, exceeding the area of Ireland. If that part of this plain which lies below, or to the south of the branching off of the highest arm, called the Atchafalaya, be termed the delta, it const.i.tutes less than half of the whole, being 14,000 square British miles in area. The delta may be said to be bounded on the east, west, and south by the sea; on the north chiefly by the broad valley-plain which entirely resembles it in character as in origin. The east and west boundaries of the alluvial region above the head of the delta consists of cliffs or bluffs, which on the east side of the Mississippi are very abrupt, and are undermined by the river at many points. They consist, from Baton Rouge in Louisiana, where they commence, as far north as the borders of Kentucky, of geological formations newer than the cretaceous, the lowest being Eocene, and the uppermost consisting of loam, resembling the loess of the Rhine, and containing freshwater and land sh.e.l.ls almost all of existing species.

(See fig. 23.) These recent sh.e.l.ls are a.s.sociated with the bones of the mastodon, elephant, tapir, mylodon, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds, most of them of extinct species.

I have endeavored to show in my Second Visit to the United States, that this extensive formation of loam is either an ancient alluvial plain or a delta of the great river, formed originally at a lower level, and since upheaved, and partially denuded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 23.

VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.]

The Mississippi in that part of its course which is below the mouth of the Ohio, frequently washes the eastern bluffs, but never once comes in contact with the western. These are composed of similar formations; but I learn from Mr. Forshey that they rise up more gently from the alluvial plain (as at _a_, fig. 23). It is supposed that the waters are thrown to the eastern side, because all the large tributary rivers entering from the west have filled that side of the great valley with their deltas, or with a sloping ma.s.s of clay and sand; so that the opposite bluffs are undermined, and the Mississippi is slowly but incessantly advancing eastward.[357]

_Curves of the Mississippi._--The river traverses the plain in a meandering course, describing immense curves. After sweeping round the half of a circle, it is carried in a rapid current diagonally across the ordinary direction of its channel, to another curve of similar shape.

Opposite to each of these, there is always a sand-bar, answering, in the convexity of its form, to the concavity of "the bend," as it is called.[358] The river, by continually wearing these curves deep, returns, like many other streams before described, on its own track, so that a vessel in some places, after sailing for twenty-five or thirty miles, is brought round again to within a mile of the place whence it started. When the waters approach so near to each other, it often happens at high floods that they burst through the small tongue of land, and insulate a portion, rushing through what is called the "cut-off," so that vessels may pa.s.s from one point to another in half a mile to a distance which it previously required a voyage of twenty miles to reach. As soon as the river has excavated the new pa.s.sage, bars of sand and mud are formed at the two points of junction with the old bend, which is soon entirely separated from the main river by a continuous mud-bank covered with wood. The old bend then becomes a semicircular lake of clear water, inhabited by large gar-fish, alligators, and wild fowl, which the steam-boats have nearly driven away from the main river. A mult.i.tude of such crescent-shaped lakes, scattered far and wide over the alluvial plain, the greater number of them to the west, but some of them also eastward of the Mississippi, bear testimony of the extensive wanderings of the great stream in former ages. For the last two hundred miles above its mouth the course of the river is much less winding than above, there being only in the whole of that distance one great curve, that called the "English Turn." This great straightness of the stream is ascribed by Mr. Forshey to the superior tenacity of the banks, which are more clayey in this region.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 24.

Section of channel, bank, levees (_a_ and _b_), and swamps of Mississippi river.]

The Mississippi has been incorrectly described by some of the earlier geographers, as a river running along the top of a long hill, or mound in a plain. In reality it runs in a valley, from 100 to 200 or more feet in depth, as _a_, _c_, _b_, fig. 24, its banks forming long strips of land parallel to the course of the main stream, and to the swamps _g_, _f_, and _d_, _e_, lying on each side. These extensive mora.s.ses, which are commonly well-wooded, though often submerged for months continuously, are rarely more than fifteen feet below the summit level of the banks. The banks themselves are occasionally overflowed, but are usually above water for a breadth of about two miles. They follow all the curves of the great river, and near New Orleans are raised artificially by embankments (or levees), _a b_, fig. 24, through which the river when swollen sometimes cuts a deep channel (or creva.s.se), inundating the adjoining low lands and swamps, and not sparing the lower streets of the great city.

The cause of the uniform upward slope of the river-bank above the adjoining alluvial plain is this: when the waters charged with sediment pa.s.s over the banks in the flood season, their velocity is checked among the herbage and reeds, and they throw down at once the coa.r.s.er and more sandy matter with which they are charged. But the fine particles of mud are carried farther on, so that at the distance of about two miles, a thin film of fine clay only subsides, forming a stiff unctuous black soil, which gradually envelops the base of trees growing on the borders of the swamps.

_Waste of the banks._--It has been said of a mountain torrent, that "it lays down what it will remove, and removes what it has laid down;" and in like manner the Mississippi, by the continual shifting of its course, sweeps away, during a great portion of the year, considerable tracts of alluvium, which were gradually acc.u.mulated by the overflow of former years, and the matter now left during the spring-floods will be at some future time removed. After the flood season, when the river subsides within its channel, it acts with destructive force upon the alluvial banks, softened and diluted by the recent overflow. Several acres at a time, thickly covered with wood, are precipitated into the stream; and large portions of the islands are frequently swept away.

"Some years ago," observes Captain Hall, "when the Mississippi was regularly surveyed, all its islands were numbered, from the confluence of the Missouri to the sea; but every season makes such revolutions, not only in the number, but in the magnitude and situation of these islands, that this enumeration is now almost obsolete. Sometimes large islands are entirely melted away; at other places they have attached themselves to the main sh.o.r.e, or, which is the more correct statement, the interval has been filled up by myriads of logs cemented together by mud and rubbish."[359]

_Rafts._--One of the most interesting features in the great rivers of this part of America is the frequent acc.u.mulation of what are termed "rafts," or ma.s.ses of floating trees, which have been arrested in their progress by snags, islands, shoals, or other obstructions, and made to acc.u.mulate, so as to form natural bridges, reaching entirely across the stream. One of the largest of these was called the raft of the Atchafalaya, an arm of the Mississippi, which was certainly at some former time the channel of the Red River, when the latter found its way to the Gulf of Mexico by a separate course. The Atchafalaya being in a direct line with the general direction of the Mississippi, catches a large portion of the timber annually brought down from the north; and the drift-trees collected in about thirty-eight years previous to 1816 formed a continuous raft, no less than ten miles in length, 220 yards wide, and eight feet deep. The whole rose and fell with the water, yet was covered with green bushes and trees, and its surface enlivened in the autumn by a variety of beautiful flowers. It went on increasing till about 1835, when some of the trees upon it had grown to the height of about sixty feet. Steps were then taken by the State of Louisiana to clear away the whole raft, and open the navigation, which was effected, not without great labor, in the s.p.a.ce of four years.

The rafts on Red River are equally remarkable: in some parts of its course, cedar-trees are heaped up by themselves, and in other places, pines. On the rise of the waters in summer hundreds of these are seen, some with their green leaves still upon them, just as they have fallen from a neighboring bank, others leafless, broken and worn in their pa.s.sage from a far distant tributary: wherever they acc.u.mulate on the edge of a sand-bar they arrest the current, and soon become covered with sediment. On this mud the young willows and the poplars called cotton-wood spring up, their boughs still farther r.e.t.a.r.ding the stream, and as the inundation rises, accelerating the deposition of new soil.

The bank continuing to enlarge, the channel at length becomes so narrow that a single long tree may reach from side to side, and the remaining s.p.a.ce is then soon choked up by a quant.i.ty of other timber.

"Unfortunately for the navigation of the Mississippi," observes Captain Hall, "some of the largest trunks, after being cast down from the position on which they grew, get their roots entangled with the bottom of the river, where they remain anch.o.r.ed, as it were, in the mud. The force of the current naturally gives their tops a tendency downwards, and, by its flowing past, soon strips them of their leaves and branches.

These fixtures, called snags, or planters, are extremely dangerous to the steam-vessels proceeding up the stream, in which they lie like a lance in rest, concealed beneath the water, with their sharp ends pointed directly against the bows of the vessels coming up. For the most part these formidable snags remain so still that they can be detected only by a slight ripple above them, not perceptible to inexperienced eyes. Sometimes, however, they vibrate up and down, alternately showing their heads above the surface and bathing them beneath it."[360] So imminent, until lately, was the danger caused by these obstructions, that almost all the boats on the Mississippi were constructed on a particular plan, to guard against fatal accidents; but in the last ten years, by the aid of the power of steam and the machinery of a snag-boat, as it is called, the greater number of these trunks of trees have been drawn out of the mud.[361]

The prodigious quant.i.ty of wood annually drifted down by the Mississippi and its tributaries, is a subject of geological interest, not merely as ill.u.s.trating the manner in which abundance of vegetable matter becomes, in the ordinary course of nature, imbedded in submarine and estuary deposits, but as attesting the constant destruction of soil and transportation of matter to lower levels by the tendency of rivers to shift their courses. Each of these trees must have required many years, some of them centuries, to attain their full size; the soil, therefore, whereon they grew, after remaining undisturbed for long periods, is ultimately torn up and swept away.

It is also found in excavating at New Orleans, even at the depth of several yards below the level of the sea, that the soil of the delta contains innumerable trunks of trees, layer above layer, some prostrate, as if drifted, others broken off near the bottom, but remaining still erect, and with their roots spreading on all sides, as if in their natural position. In such situations they appeared to me to indicate a sinking of the ground, as the trees must formerly have grown in marshes above the sea-level. In the higher parts of the alluvial plain, for many hundred miles above the head of the delta, similar stools and roots of trees are also seen buried in stiff clay at different levels, one above the other, and exposed to view in the banks at low water. They point clearly to the successive growth of forests in the extensive swamps of the plain, where the ground was slowly raised, year after year, by the mud thrown down during inundations. These roots and stools belong chiefly to the deciduous cypress (_Taxodium distichum_), and other swamp-trees, and they bear testimony to the constant shifting of the course of the great river, which is always excavating land originally formed at some distance from its banks.

_Formation of lakes in Louisiana._.--Another striking feature in the basin of the Mississippi, ill.u.s.trative of the changes now in progress, is the formation by natural causes of great lakes, and the drainage of others. These are especially frequent in the basin of the Red River in Louisiana, where the largest of them, called Bistineau, is more than _thirty miles_ long, and has a medium depth of from _fifteen_ to _twenty_ feet. In the deepest parts are seen numerous cypress-trees, of all sizes, now dead, and most of them with their tops broken by the wind, yet standing erect under water. This tree resists the action of air and water longer than any other, and, if not submerged throughout the whole year, will retain life for an extraordinary period. Lake Bistineau, as well as Black Lake, Cado Lake, Spanish Lake, Natchitoches Lake, and many others, have been formed, according to Darby, by the gradual elevation of the bed of Red River, in which the alluvial acc.u.mulations have been so great as to raise its channel, and cause its waters, during the flood season, to flow up the mouths of many tributaries, and to convert parts of their courses into lakes. In the autumn, when the level of Red River is again depressed, the waters rush back, and some lakes become gra.s.sy meadows, with streams meandering through them.[362] Thus, there is a periodical flux and reflux between Red River and some of these basins, which are merely reservoirs, alternately emptied and filled, like our tide estuaries--with this difference, that in the one case the land is submerged for several months continuously, and in the other twice in every twenty-four hours.

It has happened, in several cases, that a raft of timber or a bar has been thrown by Red River across some of the openings of these channels, and then the lakes become, like Bistineau, constant repositories of water. But, even in these cases, their level is liable to annual elevation and depression, because the flood of the main river, when at its height, pa.s.ses over the bar; just as, where sand-hills close the entrance of an estuary on the Norfolk or Suffolk coast, the sea, during some high tide or storm, has often breached the barrier and inundated again the interior.

I am informed by Mr. Featherstonhaugh that the plains of the Red River and the Arkansas are so low and flat, that whenever the Mississippi rises thirty feet above its ordinary level, those great tributaries are made to flow back, and inundate a region of vast extent. Both the streams alluded to contain red sediment, derived from the decomposition of red porphyry; and since 1833, when there was a great inundation in the Arkansas, an immense swamp has been formed near the Mammelle mountain, comprising 30,000 acres, with here and there large lagoons, where the old bed of the river was situated; in which innumerable trees, for the most part dead, are seen standing, of cypress, cotton-wood, or poplar, the triple-thorned acacia, and others, which are of great size.

Their trunks appear as if painted red for about fifteen feet from the ground; at which height a perfectly level line extends through the whole forest, marking the rise of the waters during the last flood.[363]

But most probably the causes above a.s.signed for the recent origin of these lakes are not the only ones. Subterranean movements have altered, so lately as the years 1811-12, the relative levels of various parts of the basin of the Mississippi, situated 300 miles northeast of Lake Bistineau. In those years the great valley, from the mouth of the Ohio to that of the St. Francis, including a tract 300 miles in length, and exceeding in area the whole basin of the Thames, was convulsed to such a degree, as to create new islands in the river, and lakes in the alluvial plain. Some of these were on the left or east bank of the Mississippi, and were twenty miles in extent; as, for example, those named Reelfoot and Obion in Tennessee, formed in the channels or valleys of small streams bearing the same names.[364]