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THE

NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC
MAGAZINE

1927. BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, WASHINGTON D. C.. IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927

Since White Man's Discovery This Mighty River Has Served Him Well, Yet It Has Brought Widespread Devastation Along Its Lower Reaches

BY FREDERICK SIMPICH

AUTHOR OF "SINGAPORE, CROSSROADS OF THE EAST," "MISSOURI, MOTHER OF THE WEST," "ALONG OUR SIDE OF THE MEXICAN BORDER," ETC., ETC., IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE

S'

With Illustrations from Photographs by Clifton Adams, Staff Photographer

INCE time began, the fact that water runs downhill has warped the fate of men and nations. In Babylonia kingdoms fell with floods and the famines that followed. Some say a Hebrew prophet could foretell the Seven Lean Years because he knew the habits of the Nile. The Mongols, cutting the Tigris levees, conquered Baghdad. In China more men drown than die in battle. One Yellow River flood claimed more than a million who drowned or starved.

So, through the ages, man's fiercest fight has been to save his land from flood and famine-a fiercer fight by far than any war ever waged against a hostile kingdom.

MAN STRUGGLES VAINLY FOR PERFECT FLOOD CONTROL

Along the Rhine and Danube, the Volga and Yellow; along the Tigris, Indus, and Euphrates; along our own cruel Colorado and marauding Mississippi, man has long matched his wits against the powers of Nature.

When white men founded New Orleans, 200 years ago, they had to throw up dirt banks to bar the river from their rude

camp. From that day to this, with men, mules, machines, and money, the towns and planters along the river, aided in more recent years by the Government, have fought a losing fight against the floods.

It is a stupendous struggle. Its battle front is flung from the Ohio to the Gulf. In heat, mud, and miasma, slaving men and sweating animals, toiling through the years, have thrown up 2,500 miles of huge, fortlike levees. Higher and higher they build them, hoping always that some day, somehow, they may achieve perfect flood control.

But hydraulic principles are stubborn. They will not compromise with man's puny plans. The levees, as built, have turned once vast, empty swamps into rich, thickly inhabited areas and added hugely to our national wealth. Five years out of six they may hold; to that extent they are successful; but when the river rises high enough it breaks them. In the great floods of the eighties the levee system broke in 712 places. It had often broken before. It has often broken since.

Now, as I write this, it is breaking again. To-day the most destructive flood

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"YES, WE HAD BREAKFAST, BUT WE HAVE NOTHING TO PLAY WITH"

It was not easy to explain to children why pets and toys had to be abandoned when families fled before the rising floods. At Natchez, Mississippi, Secretaries Hoover and Davis visited the youngsters in camp. One bashful boy, dodging the camera, hid behind the friendly coattails of Mr. Hoover.

in all the annals of this rapacious river is rolling from Cairo to the sea.*

Parts of seven States are under water. Nearly 800,000 people have been driven from their homes or rescued from housetops, trees, levees, and railway embank

ments.

To save New Orleans, levees are blown up. Tons and tons of dynamite are used, throwing masses of mud and driftwood high into the air, repicturing in a way the shell-torn fields of France in war times.

*Major Simpich was assigned to write an eyewitness account of the flood, which ranks as a major geographic phenomenon of our time; therefore much of his narrative is a record of direct observation in the present tense.

In the flood's wide path from Arkansas to Louisiana, unknown thousands of farm animals have been drowned, marooned on mounds and levees, or here and there rescued by cruising boats. To avoid pestilence, the Red Cross uses oil by the carload to burn dead mules, horses and

COWS.

To human victims of the flood more than 50,000,000 grains of quinine have been given and more than half a million people inoculated against disease.

Final property loss may be nearly a billion dollars.

The whole Nation, at first amazed and appalled, quickly and magnificently rallies.

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DISTANT TRIBUTARIES HELP MAKE LOWER MISSISSIPPI FLOODS

With 31 States and two Canadian provinces drained by the Mississippi and its half a hundred tributaries, it is easy to see why, in rainy years, there should be high water in the lower valley. In 1927 parts of seven States were inundated (see text, page 244).

with millions in money, with trainloads of clothing and food to comfort hungry, helpless victims of the worst American flood of all time.

"It is the greatest peace-time disaster in our history," said Herbert Hoover. "We are humble before such an outburst of the forces of Nature and the futility of man in their control."

THE FLOOD AREA PRESENTS A DISMAL

PICTURE

I write now on board a stern-wheel relief boat, cruising among the tree tops of Louisiana. Doré, who gave us his version of the Deluge, could not exaggerate this aspect of desolation.

But for the rainbow and His promise, victims of this cataclysm might well believe, as they cling to their heaving housetops in a wind-tossed, stinking sea, that

another great flood has come to drown a sin-cursed world. Small wonder that some of the ignorant, in their terror, fear the Great Lakes have burst and are sweeping over the South!

Picture to yourself, if you can, this astounding panorama of watery waste and human misery:

First, rains that fell for months over 31 States and two Canadian provinces drained by the Great River, comprising an area of 1,240,000 square miles. This rainfall would amount to nearly a foot of water spread over that vast area that is nearly 250 cubic miles of water! Much of this evaporated or soaked deep into the earth; but more than 60 cubic miles of it had to reach the Gulf.

Then the Mississippi Basin, like a giant funnel, its wide top stretching from New York out to Montana, yet forcing all its

Official Photograph, U. S. Army Air Corps

IN MANY FLOODED RIVER TOWNS PRACTICALLY THE ENTIRE POPULATION FLED TO THE LEVEES

By an odd whim of the rising waters, at one time the crest of the flood was higher behind the levees at Arkansas City, shown here, than it was in the

main channel of the Mississippi. Tents that house refugees are shown on the levee. In the foreground is a flooded lumberyard.

[graphic]

A GOOD FLAGMAN IN ARKANSAS MUST ALSO BE A GOOD SWIMMER

Official Photograph, U. S. Army Air Corps

With many of their bridges gone and much of their track under water, railways operated wherever possible. Often, with water up to the engine's
firebox and brakemen wading ahead, feeling to see if rails were still there, trains crawled through the yellow, swirling sea. Courageously, day and
night, train crews worked to save people, household goods, and livestock.

[graphic]
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