2 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

junction of the Ohio to a point half way down to the sea, the width
averages a mile in high water; thence to the sea the width steadily
diminishes, until, at the ' Passes/ above the mouth, it is but little
over half a mile. At the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth
is eighty-seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hun-
dred and twenty-nine just above the mouth.

The difference in lise and fall is also remarkable—not in the
upper, but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down
to Natchez (three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)—about

fifty feet. But at Bayou La Fourche the
river rises only twenty-four feet; at New
Orleans only fifteen, and just above the
mouth only two and one half.
An article in the New Orleans * Times-
Democrat/ based upon reports of able engineers, states that the river
annually empties four hundred and six million tons of mud into the
Gulf of Mexico—which brings to mind Captain Marryat's rude name
for the Mississippi—c the Great Sewer.' This mud, solidified, would
make a mass a mile square and two hundred and forty-one feet high.
The mud deposit gradually extends the land—but only gradually;
it has extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundred
years which have ekpsed since the river took its place in history.