The few mules, horses and cattle preserved from the flood will be unfit for any immediate service, and must continue to live, if they live at all, upon the leaves, moss and cane tops, until such time as the grass can grow again.

The people, with nothing now, will have no more when the water subsides; and cannot have until the land can be made to yield its fruits. How are they to be fed and supported until such time?

Death by famine on the dry, but barren ground, would be quite as terrible as to have been swallowed up in the waters!

The Relief Committee see and understand all this, and it is a source of the most sickening anxiety to know that they will be impotent to avert what seems inevitable. The people, as rapidly as possible, and under whatever circumstances, hardships and sacrifices, must begin quickly to make arrangements for themselves by engaging for food and raiment alone, to work, wherever work on such terms can be had; and if not to be had in their present neighborhoods, to seek it in more distant places, if able to reach them. It is true that a great part of the most helpless and destitute would be, by such policy, left where they are, to live upon public charities, or perish in the swamps.

Nothing less than $1,000,000 in supplies will enable these people to re-commence and continue to labor where they are, until the earliest products of the soil can give subsistence, and if not sustained to that extent who shall say what crimes may not be committed, if crime it could be called, in the desperation of these starving thousands, thrown upon communities, now barely self-supporting? This is a gloomy picture truly, but it is best always to look dangers straight in the face, and see them in their full proportions, if they are to be averted. However generous the people of the country, and of the cities and towns might be, adequate relief from such quarters, could not be depended on; there can be no sufficient aid extended, except through the bounty of the General Government.