French to dykes, or artificial banks, and meaning simply “raised places.” But of later years, both state and national resources have been spent freely in endeavoring to curb the restless giant. More than $25,000,000 has been spent in this way since the war. The Mississippi River Commission, organized in 1879, under the supervision of the War Department, as the Signal Service has been, had nominally in view the increasing of facilities for navigation; but as the methods employed for the two objects have necessarily been much the same, no little has been done for protection. The character of the lower Mississippi and its valley gravely increase the difficulties of the case. Its bed has been worn for ages through a somewhat elevated region, and at present the resultant valley has a width varying from twenty to one hundred and fifty miles. The result has been that the channel of the river shifts continually, and is extremely crooked, literally turning time and again to every conceivable point of the compass. These curves present the most vexatious features the levee system must contend with; for it is easily perceived that the levee on the convex side of the bend in the river has the current directed full against it, adding the great eroding power of the water to the weight it must sustain. “The levees are relied on as the chief aid to the work of the commission, but the commission does not construct them, or even work directly to strengthen them. These levees are nothing more than artificial banks or heaps of soil shoveled up along the line of the natural banks. The commission is working to narrow the wide places in the river, so as to secure a uniform width of three thousand feet. This is done by constructing revetments, consisting principally of mattrasses of wire and brush, which are secured by rubble-stone. In other places great quantities of stone are [Illustration: MAKING MATS FOR LEVEE FRONTS.] dumped, and various similar means are used to encourage the scour in the shallower parts of the river, and also to prevent the undermining of the natural or artificial banks.