The vast current of the Mississippi River, constantly augmented by capacious tributaries, naturally finds outlets in times of flood through the banks, and thus overspreads the extensive adjacent lowlands. To the eastward, south of Memphis, and extending down almost to Vicksburg, is the enormous Yazoo Basin, a lowland of many bayous and lakes, making a region of excessive fertility, and its Choctaw name has thus been naturally acquired, meaning "leafy." The river originates in the bayous and sloughs springing from the eastern Mississippi bank, which form the Tallahatchie River, and that stream, uniting with the Yallabusha and the Sunflower, make the deep, winding and very sluggish Yazoo, flowing nearly three hundred miles down to the Mississippi, twelve miles above Vicksburg. The extensive bottom lands of this Yazoo Delta compose about one-sixth of the State of Mississippi, its entire northwestern portion, and being a rich agricultural region are traversed by railways and have many flourishing towns and villages. There is a perfect network of waterways throughout this fertile delta, over thirty of the streams being navigable for large steamboats, and it also has extensive forests of valuable timber. The entire region is alluvial, the soil having been deposited by the overflows of the Mississippi during past ages, and now that this extensive basin is protected by an elaborate system of levees from further overflows, almost the whole of it is available for cultivation. There are nearly five millions of acres of reclaimed lands here, and though less than one-fifth of this surface is devoted to cotton, it is said to grow more of that great staple than any other single district in the world. The malaria, often prevalent along the Yazoo, led the Choctaws to call it the "river of death."