An accidental accumulation of logs and driftwood.
1802. The upper raft is of considerable magnitude, and covered with grass and other herbage, with some bushes.—A. Ellicott, ‘Journal’ (1803) p. 189.
1829. The professed object of our walk was to see one of those curious collections of logs, called rafts, which are formed by the trunks of trees brought down by the freshes in the rainy season.—Basil Hall, ‘Travels in North America,’ iii. 382.
1837. This is a collection of logs, the most of them floating, lying entirely across the channel, and is 180 feet long and 170 feet wide. It is upheld, as it was doubtless formed, by a few trees which have been uprooted and precipitated into the channel in consequence of the abrasion of the banks by the annual floods. [Other rafts are 325 by 220; 600 by 175, &c.]—Report of Capt. Guion, Jan. 17: Cong. Globe, 1842, p. 345, App.
1848. Appropriations … for the removal of the great raft and other obstructions to the navigation of Red River.—Mr. Johnson of La., U.S. Senate, July 5: Cong. Globe, p. 897.
1860. Annually a large amount of timber floats down the Red River; and from the character of the stream it collects in rafts, and the raft constantly extends higher and higher above each obstruction which is made.—Mr. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, the same, June 23: id., p. 3261.
1861. The cost of transportation across the few miles of this [Red River] raft is nearly as much as it would be from New Orleans to Liverpool.—Mr. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, U.S. Senate, Jan. 24: Cong. Globe, p. 538/2. “Five times as much,” added Mr. Benjamin of Louisiana.
