Life Along the Mississippi

摘要

Unless you are driving across it or flying over it or floating down it, it is hard to see the actual Mississippi. Anyone who had anything to do with the river discovered long ago that it was too powerful to leave alone, this huge continental drainpipe, and so the great en- gineers engineered the levees and locks and dams that reduced the number of ships that sank and towns that vanished-but also had the effect of hiding the river behind its walls and leaving the rest to the imagination.