has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened:  to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, and placed the countryman’s plantation on its bank (quadrupling its value), and that other party’s formerly valuable plantation finds itself away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten miles of it, and down goes its value to a fourth of its former worth.  Watches are kept on those narrow necks, at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever having another opportunity to cut a ditch.

Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.  Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was only half a mile across, in its narrowest place.  You could walk across there in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey around the cape on a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing.  In 1722 the river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus shortened itself thirty-five miles.  In the same way it shortened itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699.  Below Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think).  This shortened the river twenty-eight miles.  In our day, if you travel by river from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to the northernmost, you go only seventy miles.  To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!—­ shortening of eighty-eight miles in that trifling distance.  At some forgotten time in the past, cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84; and at Hale’s Point.  These shortened the river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles.

Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend; and at Council Bend.  These shortened the river, in the aggregate, sixty-seven miles.  In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles or more.

Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.  It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.  It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off.  It has lost sixty-seven miles since.  Consequently its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and ‘let on’ to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!  Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!  Nor ‘development of species,’ either!  Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague—­vague.  Please observe:—­