The River and Its History
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883), chapter 1. Public domain, no thirdparty rights.
It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening toward its mouth, it
grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper. From the 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 hundred and
twenty-nine just above the mouth.
The difference in rise 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—'the Great Sewer.' This mud, solidified, would
make a mass a mile square and two hundred and forty-one feet high.
