The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 | Page 6

and therefore its whereabouts are not easily
discovered by an enemy; and moreover, if it has to be abandoned in a
retreat, it can be disabled with one sharp blow of a stone, so that it can
never be turned on its fleeing owners by a victorious enemy.
If the report about it is true, it has one fault, that is so serious that it
outweighs all the virtues. This fault is that the dynamite-gun has a habit
of going off at both ends; that is to say, it is liable to explode both at the
breech and the muzzle. It may therefore be quite as destructive to the
army firing it, as to the enemy at which it is fired.
Of course this will render the gun very unpopular, if it is true; but
people who understand the weapon declare that the fault lies, not in the
gun, but with the climate of the West Indies.
The three tubes of this gun (which we described fully in Number 6 of
THE GREAT ROUND WORLD) are fastened together at the breech
with a clasp which holds the whole mechanism of the gun in place.
The climate of the West Indies is so moist that metal rusts in an
amazingly short space of time, and it is difficult to keep anything bright
and polished.
It is supposed by those who understand the gun that, having been
constantly exposed to the moist air, it has rusted, and that the important
clasp has become so rusty that it can no longer be pushed fully home,
and so the gun is not secure.
In their opinion the failure of the dynamite-gun has not been proved; it
may be necessary to make some alterations to fit it for service in
swampy countries, but that as a weapon it is still a success.
* * * * *
Terrible floods are reported from the Mississippi Valley. A section of
the country equal in size to the whole State of Missouri is now under
water, and steamboats are hurrying over what were once farm lands,
rescuing the unfortunate families who have been caught by the floods.
The Mississippi, the largest river on our continent, flows through what
is known as the Gulf Coast Plain.
The Gulf Coast Plain is formed by the valley lying between the great
mountain ranges which make the framework of our country.

The Mississippi with its tributaries drains the whole of the enormous
tract of land lying between these three main mountain ranges.
This great river forms the highway for the interior of our country, and
winds through the plain for about a thousand miles. Every year when
the heavy spring rains fall, and the snows melt in the north, the river
overflows its bed, and floods the lowlands around it.
To keep the river within its bounds, mounds of earth, called levees,
have been built for hundreds of miles along the banks. The Mississippi
floods are only dangerous when the thaws are very sudden, or the rains
so heavy that the river swells in size to such an extent that the levees
are broken down, and the water, bursting its bounds, rushes with an
angry flood over the surrounding country, destroying everything in its
path.
As a usual thing the spring floods are beneficial to the country, for the
Mississippi is a very muddy river, and when it overflows it spreads this
mud over the country, in much the same fashion that the Nile does, and
with the same result of fertilizing and enriching the soil.
All swift waters wash away some portion of their bed in their flow, and
carry it along with them in their journey to the sea.
The Mississippi in its thousand-mile course carries a vast amount of
this stolen earth, so much indeed that every year it deposits in the Gulf
of Mexico an amount of mud which would make a pile one mile square
and 268 feet high.
[Illustration]
This enormous yearly deposit is literally filling up the Gulf, and in the
ages to come dry land and a new country will be found where the
waters of the Gulf now lie.
Every year the Mississippi brings down enough earth with it to help it
move its mouth 338 feet farther out into the sea, and every year it
builds on to its delta, which now contains thousands of square miles!
You can understand that the angry flood of such a powerful river as this
must be a very serious matter. For a distance of nearly twenty miles in
Arkansas, levees have given way, and thousands of acres of land have
been flooded; the waters sweeping away the homes, drowning the cattle,
and compelling the people to seek the points above the angry waters,
and wait in