He has only to reflect that the river from Natchez to the Balize is usually from three to four hundred feet deep; across the bar there is only eighteen feet water; beyond the bar, just in the ocean, the Gulf is unfathomable.
"Eight days in New Orleans in February, 1847"
Albert James Pickett
By degrees bulrushes of enormous growth become visible, and a few more miles of mud brought us within sight of a cluster of huts called the Balize, by far the most miserable station that I ever saw made the dwelling of man, but I was told that many families of pilots and fishermen lived there.
"Domestic Manners of the Americans"
Fanny Trollope
At no one point was there an inch of what painters call a second distance; and for the length of one hundred and twenty miles, from the Balize to New Orleans, and one hundred miles above the town, the land is defended from the encroachments of the river by a high embankment which is called the Levee; without which the dwellings would speedily disappear, as the river is evidently higher than the banks would be without it.
"Domestic Manners of the Americans"
Fanny Trollope