levee

1) (French.) The time of rising; the concourse of persons who visit a prince or great personage in the morning.--Johnson.

Such as are troubled with the disease of levee-hunting, and are forced to seek their bread every morning at the chamber-doors of great men.--Addison, Spectator, No. 547.

This word has been curiously perverted by us from its original signification, so as to mean an evening (!) party or assembly at the house of a great or wealthy person; as, 'the President's levee.'

2) (French.) An embankment on the side of a river, to confine it within its natural channel. The lower part of Louisiana, which has been formed by encroachments from the sea, is subject to be inundated by the Mississippi and its various branches, for a distance of more than 300 miles. In order to protect the rich lands on these rivers, mounds ure thrown up, of clay, cypress logs, and green turf, sometimes to the height of 15 feet, with a breadth of 30 feet at the base. These, in the language of that part of the country, are called levees. They extend for hundreds of miles; and when the rivers are full, cultivated fields covered with rich crops, and studded with villages, are seen lying far below the river courses.--Encyclopedia Americana.

The great feature of New Orleans is the Levee. Extending for about five miles in length, and an average of two hundred feet in width, on the west bank of this river, which here runs to the north-east, it is made the great dépôt not only for the products of the vast country bordering on the Mississippi, and its navigable tributaries, but also of every foreign port, by means of about five hundred steamboats on the one hand, and every variety of sea-craft on the other, which are at all times to be seen in great numbers along the entire length, discharging and receiving their cargoes. To the business man it is one of the most interesting scenes in the world, and for the "calculating" man here are found the "items" from which an estimate may be formed of the rapid growth and vast resources of the "Great West." Who but a "native" can see the approach of a steamer laden with forty-six hundred and odd bales of cotton, and witness casks of sugar, molasses and tobacco by the thousand, together with the boxes and bales of merchandise from every clime which here accumulate, and not wonder whence all this is received and whither it is to go?--Cor. of N. Y. Tribune.