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As the Mississippi River flows south toward the Gulf of Mexico it passes other cities, but the biggest one is St. Louis, about half-way down. St. Louis—another saint—is near the two biggest branches of the Mississippi River—the Missouri, which comes in from the west, and the Ohio, which comes in from the east—both rivers named after States and both States named after the Indians. The Missouri is such a big branch that it is hard to tell whether it is a branch of the Mississippi or the Mississippi is a branch of it. Indeed, if you can find where the Missouri River begins you will see that from that point to the end of the Mississippi the river is much longer than the Mississippi itself—it is over 4,000 miles—so the Missouri- Mississippi together is the longest river

The Mississippi gets bigger and bigger as it gets more and more branches, and in the spring when the snow melts and the rain rains so hard and flows down into the branches, the river swells and swells until it finally bursts over its banks and floods the country. So, down where this is likely to happen, men have built banks along the river on each side, to hold the water in. These banks are called levees; but sometimes the river grows too big and strong even for these levees to hold it in, and the river breaks through or over the top and floods the country. If there happen to be any farms or houses or towns with people in them, the water washes houses away and drowns people and animals, and destroys thousands upon thousands of farms and other property.

The Mississippi near its end passes the city called New Orleans and at last flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The end of a river where it flows into the sea is called its mouth. I never knew why, because a mouth is where water flows in, not where it flows out. At any rate, the Mississippi has several mouths instead of one mouth, for the water in the river brings along with it so much mud that it settles right in the way of the river’s mouth and forms mud islands which the river has to go round, so the river blocks itself.

参考译文

密西西比河一路向南流往墨西哥湾，沿途还经过其他城市，其中最大的就是中途的圣路易斯。圣路易斯—也是一位圣者之名—靠近密西西比河最大的两条支流—由西汇入的密苏里河和由东汇入的俄亥俄河—两条河都是以所在的州命名的，这两个州又都是来自印第安语。密苏里是一条非常大的支流，以至于很难分清它是密西西比河的支流还是密西西比河是它的支流。甚至，如果你能找到密苏里河的源头，你就会发现从源头到密西西比河的尽头，这样一条河要比密西西比河本身长很多—有4,000多英里—因此密苏里河和密西西比河加在一起，就是全世界最长的河流。

随着支流的不断增多，密西西比河越来越宽，春季，白雪消融，雨水丰富，大量的水流入到各支流中去，密西西比河河水上涨，直到最终漫过河岸淹没乡村。于是，在下游有可能发生洪水泛滥的地方，人们沿着河流两岸修建了堤岸，拦住河水。这些堤岸叫做防洪大堤；但有时河水上涨过猛，水势太凶，就连这些大堤也拦不住，河水冲垮或是漫过大堤，造成洪水灾害。如果碰巧这里有农田或房屋或者是有人居住的小镇，河水就会冲走房屋，淹死人和动物，毁掉成千上万的农田和其他财产。

密西西比河流入墨西哥湾前经过的最后一个城市叫新奥尔良。河流尽头入海处叫做河口。我一直不知道为什么叫“河口”，因为“口”是水流入的地方，而不是流出的地方。不管怎样，密西西比河有好几个河口，而不是只有一个，因为河水带来大量的淤泥，淤泥正好在河口堆积下来形成了好几个岛，这样河流必须绕过小岛流入大海，因此河流自己堵住了自己前行的路，形成了好几个河口。