Riverfront: The Big Muddy

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable .
- St Louis-born T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

North America's principal waterway, the Mississippi - the name comes from the Algonquin words for "big" and "river" - starts just ninety miles south of the Canadian border at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and winds its way 2348 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, taking in over one hundred tributaries on the way and draining all or part of thirty-one US states and two Canadian provinces.

The " Big Muddy " - it carries 2lb of dirt for every 1000lb of water - is one of the busiest commercial rivers in the world, and one of the least conventional. Instead of widening toward its mouth, like most rivers, the Mississippi grows narrower and deeper. Its " Delta ," near Memphis, more than three hundred miles upstream from the river's mouth, is not a delta at all, but an alluvial flood plain. Furthermore, its estuary deposits, which extend the land six miles out to sea every century, are paltry compared to other rivers; gulf currents disperse the sediment before it has time to settle.

The Mississippi is also, in the words of Mark Twain, who spent four years as a riverboat pilot, "the crookedest river in the world." As it weaves and curls its way extravagantly along its channel, it continually cuts through narrow necks of land to shape and reshape oxbow lakes, meander scars, cutoffs and marshy backwaters. A bar could operate one day in Arkansas and then find itself in dry Tennessee the next, thanks to an overnight cutoff.

A more serious manifestation of the Mississippi's power is its propensity to flood. Although the river builds its own levees, artificial embankments have since as early as 1717 helped to safeguard crops and homes. Since the disastrous floods of 1927, the federal government has installed a wide range of flood-protection measures; virtually the entire riverfront from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the sea is now walled in, and it's even possible to drive along the top of the larger levees.

While it's no longer feasible to sail Twain's route for yourself, riverboat excursions operate in most sizeable river towns. Longer cruises, on the luxurious Delta Queen and Mississippi Queen   paddlewheelers , are expensive; contact the Delta Queen Steamboat Company, 30 Robin Street Wharf, New Orleans, LA 70130 (tel 1-800/543-1949).

Riverfront

• Riverfront
• The Big Muddy

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