It has had in derision the building of cities and towns. One
town, for example, has been left to choose between being left high and dry
five miles from water, or of meeting the fate of old Kaskaskia. And though
the town has already thrown a million dollars to the river, as if to some
unappeased god, the river is merciless. One town and another have been
ostracized or destroyed, their wharfs left far inland or carried away to
some commerceless bayou. The sentiment I have regarding the river makes it
difficult to excuse its infidelity toward one little French town in
particular, St. Genevieve. I can do so only by assuming that the river has
cared less for its later inhabitants than it did for those who gave it
name. It has laughed at the embankments on which hundreds of millions have
been spent by nation, state, and private enterprise to keep its flood in
restraint. Shorn of its trees, as Samson of his long hair, it has pulled
down the pillars of man's raising into its own destroying waters. In 1912
a space nearly two and a half times the size of the State of New Jersey
was devastated.
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