Under the lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins and the goodly acres tumble into the river; and the crash they made was not a bad effort at thunder.

Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house about twenty feet, that had a light burning in the window; and in the same instant that house went overboard.

Nobody could stay on our forecastle; the water swept across it in a torrent every time we plunged athwart the current.

At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two miles below the cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, of course.

A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters of a mile wide, and boats passed up through it without much difficulty, and so saved ten miles.
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles.
There used to be a tradition connected with it.