376

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

under his level and out of sight. Similarly, in high-river stage, in
the Hew Orleans region, the water is up to the top of the enclosing
levee-rim, the fiat country behind it lies low—representing the bottom
of a dish—and as the boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks
down upon the houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing
but that frail breastwork of earth between the people and destruc-
tion.

THE WHABVES.
The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of the
city looked as they had always looked ; warehouses which had had a
kind of Aladdin's lamp experience, however, since I had seen them;
for when the war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night
leaving them packed with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a
couple of dollars a sack, and got up in the morning and found his
mountain of salt turned into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so sud-
deaoly and to so dizzy a height had the war news sent up the price of
the article.