UNCLE MUMFQRD TTtfLOABS. 367
Commission, with its hard bottom ajad clear water, and it would just
be a holiday job for them to wall it, and pile it, and difcft it, and
tame it down, and boss it around, and make it go wherever they
wanted it to, and stay where they put it, and do just as they said,
every time. But this ain't that kind of a river. They have started
in here with big confidence, and the best intentions in the world;
but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say \
Says enough to knock their little game galley-west, don't it! How
you look at their methods once. There at Devil's Jsland, in the
Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way, the water wanted
to go another. So they put up a stone \vall. But what does the
river care for a stone wall! When it got ready, it just bulged
through it. Maybe they can build another that will stay; that is,
up there—but not down here they can't. Down here in the Lower
River, they drive some pegs to turn the water away from the shore
and stop it from slicing off the bank; very well, don't it go straight
over and cut somebody else's bank 1 Certainly. Are they going to
peg aU the banks f Why, they could buy ground and build ft new
Mississippi cheaper. They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It
won't do any good* If the river has got a mortgage on that island,
it will foreclose, sure, pegs or no pegs. Away down yonder, they
have driven two rows of piles straight through the middle of a dry
bar half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the water when the
river is low. What do you reckon that is for ? If I know, I wish
I may land in-HUMP yourself, you son of an undertaker !—ott& with
that coal-oil, now, lively, LIVELY I And just look at what they are
trying to do down there at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off
in that section, and Yicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country
town now. The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to
the town except in high water. Well, they are going to build wing-
dams in the bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the water over
and cut off the foot of the island and plough down into an old ditch
where the river used to be in. ancient times; and they think they can
persuade the water around that way, and get it to strike in above
Ticksburg, as it used to do, and fetch the town back into the world
ft.gft.fn., That is, they are going to take this whole Mississippi, and
twist it around and make it run several miles up stream* Well yon*v*