The water cleaves the banks away like a knife.

By the time the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as accomplished, for no power on earth can stop it now.

When the width has reached a hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly only five miles an hour; now it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the distance.

I was on board the first boat that tried to go through the cut-off at American Bend, but we did not get through.

It was toward midnight, and a wild night it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain.