THE RIVER AND ITS HISTORY.

The belief of the scientific people is, that the mouth used to be at
Baton Rouge, where the Mils cease, and that the two hundred miles
of land between there and the Gulf was built by the river. This
gives us the age of that piece of country, without any trouble at all—
one hundred and twenty thousand years. Yet it is much the youth-
fullest batch of country that lies around there anywhere.

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way— its disposition
to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land,
and thus straightening and shortening itself, More than once it has

shortened itself thirty miles
at a single jump ! These
cut-offs have had curious
effects : they have thrown
several river towns out into the rural districts, and built up sand
bars and forests in front of them. The town of Delta used to be
three miles below Vicksburg : a recent cut-off has radically changed
the position, and Delta is now two miles above Vicksburg.
Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that
cut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions :
for instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-
off occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land