In the Indian vernacular, “Mississippi” is said to signify “Great Water.”  “Missouri,” according to some authorities, is the Indian for “Mud River,” a most felicitous appellation.  It should properly belong to the entire river from St. Louis to the Gulf, as that stream carries down many thousand tons of mud every year.  During the many centuries that the Mississippi has been sweeping on its course, it has formed that long point of land known as the Delta, and shallowed the water in the Gulf of Mexico for more than two hundred miles.

Flowing from north to south, the river passes through all the varieties of climate.  The furs from the Rocky Mountains and the cereals of Wisconsin and Minnesota are carried on its bosom to the great city which stands in the midst of orange groves and inhales the fragrance of the magnolia.  From January to June the floods of its tributaries follow in regular succession, as the opening spring loosens the snows that line their banks.

The events of the war have made the Mississippi historic, and familiarized the public with some of its peculiarities.  Its tortuosity is well known.  The great bend opposite Vicksburg will be long remembered by thousands who have never seen it.  This bend is eclipsed by many others.  At “Terrapin Neck” the river flows twenty-one miles, and gains only three hundred yards.  At “Raccourci Bend” was a peninsula twenty-eight miles around and only half a mile across.  Several years ago a “cut-off” was made across this peninsula, for the purpose of shortening the course of the river.  A small ditch was cut, and opened when the flood was highest.

An old steamboat-man once told me that he passed the upper end of this ditch just as the water was let in.  Four hours later, as he passed the lower end, an immense torrent was rushing through the channel, and the tall trees were falling like stalks of grain before a sickle.

Within a week the new channel became the regular route for steamboats.

Similar “cut-offs” have been made at various points along the river, some of them by artificial aid, and others entirely by the action of the water.  The channel of the Mississippi is the dividing line of the States between which it flows, and the action of the river often changes the location of real estate.  There is sometimes a material difference in the laws of States that lie opposite each other.  The transfer of property on account of a change in the channel occasionally makes serious work with titles.

I once heard of a case where the heirs to an estate lost their title, in consequence of the property being transferred from Mississippi to Louisiana, by reason of the course of the river being changed.  In the former State they were heirs beyond dispute.  In the latter their claim vanished into thin air.

Once, while passing up the Mississippi, above Cairo, a fellow-passenger called my attention to a fine plantation, situated on a peninsula in Missouri.  The river, in its last flood, had broken across the neck of the peninsula.  It was certain the next freshet would establish the channel in that locality, thus throwing the plantation into Illinois.  Unless the negroes should be removed before this event they would become free.