Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[157] Mississippi, while on the west it is bounded by the lesser elevations of drift alone. The bluffs that form the escarpment of the eastern plains are usually quite steep, and thickly overgrown with timber, underbrush, and vines. At various points in its course the river touches one extremity or the other of the bottom-land, washing the base of the bluffs, and often cutting deeply into the soft strata of which they are composed. Columbus, Fort Pillow, Memphis, Helena, Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, and Port Hudson are points of this kind, and rise from eighty to two hundred feet above the freshets.

The Mississippi is, perhaps, the most tortuous stream in the world. Its course is frequently north, east, south, and west, within a circuit of twenty miles. Every few years it deviates from its channel here and there, leaving the former bed for some new route, and creating islands and peninsulas innumerable; the flat nature of the country and the soft quality of the soil allowing these excursions, which occur whenever any unusual obstacle is presented to the vast momentum of the stream. The alluvial region, throughout its entire extent, is higher near the banks of the river, and falls off gradually till it reaches the line of the bluffs; the drainage is, therefore, necessarily towards the hills, and is the source of the intricate network of bayous¹ for which the basin is remarkable. The Coldwater, the Tallahatchie, the Yazoo, the Washita, the Red, and Atchafalaya rivers, besides numerous other and smaller streams, are accordingly nothing more than huge side drains. During freshets,