It has been necessary for local communities and State governments to tax themselves to maintain them.

The national government, however, has appropriated to the purpose of facilitating inland navigation certain sums which have been used in doing this work, especially in the Mississippi Valley.

There are now 1,538 miles of levees on both sides of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau to the passes.

These levees, of course, are still inadequate to the security of the planters against these inundations.

Carrying 406 million tons of mud a year, the river becomes a dangerous stream subject to change, abandoning its old bed to cut for itself a new channel, transferring property from one State to another, isolating cities and leaving once useful levees marooned in the landscape like old Indian mounds or overgrown intrenchments.[5] This valley has, therefore, been frequently visited with disasters which have often set the population in motion.