Weekly National Intelligencer

THE RED RIVER RAFT.

Twenty-seven years ago a project was set on foot at Natchitoches for the impracticable object of removing the raft of Red River. I say impracticable because, with all the money expended, not ten miles of the great raft (one hundred miles long) has ever been removed. The attempt to dislodge the great raft of the old bed of Red River was abandoned many years ago, and Bayou Pierre substituted from Sodo or Caddo Lake down to where the bayou enters Red River just above Compte. The old route of keel boats from Compte on Red River, by the way of Lake Bisteneau and Bodkow Bayou, and onwards above the raft through a canal or dug-out (in the language of the boatmen,) was abandoned, and the pass by way of a canal cut out (from Red River entirely above the raft) into Caddo Lake, and thence through the Lake to Shreveport, where the Lake connects with Bayou Pierre; and thence down the Bayou, as before stated, has been for years, or ever since Capt. Shreve opened it, the route for boats. When this project was first suggested of removing the impenetrable barrier to the navigation of Red River, all admitted it impracticable on the plan proposed, which was to dig up and saw out the logs and trees which obstructed the main body of Red River for one hundred miles. It was commenced, however, and after incredible labor abandoned, and the route via Bayou Pierre, Shreveport, Lake Caddo, and the canal into Red River above the raft adopted and used to this day. But every freshet in Red River fills the outlet to Lake Caddo annually, rafting the river sometimes a mile above the canal or outlet, and a new canal must be dug higher up. To keep the outlet open from the river above into Caddo Lake, and the outlet open from the Lake into Bayou Pierre, is the only object to be obtained; and it is astonishing at this late day to see in the National Intelligencer a proposal from the War Department to remove the great raft of Red River, which is comparatively as permanent as the Falls of Niagara—a proposal so extravagant that many persons who would contract to improve and keep open the navigation are deterred from bidding.

C.