Louisiana

LOUISIANA, popularly known as the "Pelican State," is one of the west South Central States of the United States of America, lying on the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It is bounded north by Arkansas along the parallel of 33° N. ; east by the Mis sissippi river to 31°, which separates it in part from the State of Mississippi, eastward on the parallel of 31° to the Pearl river and the Gulf, still with the State of Mississippi on the east ; south by the gulf of Mexico ; west by the Sabine river, from the Gulf to 32° N. and thence to the parallel of 33° by a line a little west of (and parallel to) the meridian of 94° W., which separates Louisiana from Texas. The State has an area of 48,506 sq.m., of which 3,097 are water surface (including 1,060 sq.m. of land-locked bays called "lakes"). The length of the coast of the mainland and islands is about 1,700 miles.

Physical Features.

Geologically Louisiana is a very recent creation, and belongs to the "Coastal plain province." Most of the rocks or soils composing its surface were formed as submarine deposits; the easternmost and southernmost parts are true river deposits. These facts are the key to the State's chorography. The average elevation of the State above the sea is only about 10o ft., and the only parts reaching 400 ft. high are hills in Claiborne parish. The physiographic features are few and very simple. The essential elements are five : "pine-hills," "bluffs," prairies, coastal marshes and alluvial plains. These were successive stages in the geologic process which has created and is still actively modify ing the State. They are all seen, spread from north to south, west of the Mississippi, and also, save only the prairies, in the so-called "Florida parishes" east of the Mississippi.

These different elements in the region west of the Mississippi are arranged from north to south in the order of decreasing geologic age and maturity. Beginning with elevations of about 400 ft. near the Arkansas line, there is a gentle slope toward the south-east. The northern part can best be regarded as a low plateau (once marine sediments) sloping southward, traversed by the large diluvial valleys of the Mississippi, Red and Ouachita rivers, and recut by smaller tributaries into smaller plateaux and rather uniform flat-topped hills. The "bluffs" (remnants of an eroded plain formed of alluvion deposits over an old, mature and drowned topography) run through the second tier of parishes west of the Mississippi above the Red river. Below this river prairie

areas become increasingly common, constituting the entire south west corner of the State. They are usually only 20 to 3o ft. above the sea in this district, never above 7o, and are generally treeless except for marginal timber along the sluggish, meandering streams. The prairies shade off into the coast marshes. This fringe of wooded swamp and sea marsh is generally 20 to 30 m., but in places even 5o to 6o m. wide. Where the marsh is open and grassy, flooded only at high tide or in rainy seasons, and the ground firm enough to bear cattle, it is used as range. Consider able tracts have also been diked and reclaimed for cotton, sugar and especially for rice culture. The tidal action of the gulf is so slight and the marshes are so low that perfect drainage cannot be obtained through tide gates, which must therefore be supplemented by pumping machinery when rains are heavy or landward winds long prevail. The marshes encroach most upon the parishes of St. Charles, Orleans and Plaquemines. In Orleans the city of New Orleans occupies nearly all the high ground and encroaches on the swamps. The alluvial lands include the river flood plains.

Each of the larger streams, as well as a large proportion of the smaller ones, is accompanied by a belt of bottom-land, of greater or less width, lying low as regards the stream, and liable to over flow at times of high water. These flood plains form collectively what is known as the alluvial region, which extends in a broad belt down the Mississippi, and up the Ouachita and its branches and the Red river to and beyond the limits of the State. Its breadth along the Mississippi within Louisiana ranges from 1 o to 50 or 6o m., and that along the Red river and the Ouachita has an average breadth of '0 miles. Through its great flood-plain the Mississippi river winds upon the summit of a ridge formed by its own deposits. In each direction the country falls away in a suc cession of minor undulations, the summits of the ridges being occupied by the streams and bayous. Nearly all of this vast flood-plain lies below the level of high water in the Mississippi, and, but for the protection afforded by the levees, every consider able rise of its waters would inundate vast areas of fertile and cultivated land. The low regions of Louisiana, including the alluvial lands and the coast swamps, comprise about 20,000 sq.m., or nearly one-half the area of the State.