16 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



thoroughly equipped, yet inadequate to meet the conditions of the 

 present time, will be relatively less able to cope with the rapidly grow- 

 ing demands for transportation facilities in the future. Already in 

 the more densely populated portions of the country waterways once 

 abandoned are being rehabilitated. The country can not long afford 

 to ignore the possibilities presented by the development of the greatest 

 natural highway in the world — the Mississippi and its navigable tribu- 

 taries. It can not be denied that the improvement of our greatest 

 inland waterways will be followed by vastly more important industrial 

 and commercial advantages than can ever result from the opening of 

 the Panama Canal. These advantages would be not to the people of 

 the Mississippi Valley alone, but to the people of every county and 

 corner of the Union through their dependence on the products of this 

 region. 



The project, however, is not at all simple — it is an undertaking 

 fraught with problems which, unless met rightly at the start, must 

 inevitably defeat the entire purpose of improvement. Like all big 

 rivers, the Mississippi and its tributaries have bad habits, the worst 

 of which are devastating floods, followed by very low stages of water 

 at other times; rapid changes in the course through sapping of the 

 banks; and constant shifting of the channel, often over night, on 

 account of the formation of sand bars. In these respects our rivers 

 are not necessarily any worse than others, in fact, they are not so 

 bad as many of the great rivers of the world, but the correction of these 

 habits becomes an unavoidable and serious question when efficient 

 improvement for navigation is undertaken. The question of river con- 

 trol and improvement is most intimately connected with forestry, farm- 

 ing, mining and other industries, since they in many cases largely 

 determine the particular problems with which man must deal. In the 

 Ohio the overwhelming spring floods and low water stages of summer 

 are the chief difficulties, with slack water dams doing much to remedy 

 the latter condition and make navigation possible at all times. The 

 sand-bar evil in the Missouri is so great and so perplexing that it com- 

 pletely overshadows the question of flood control and sapping of banks, 

 which are in themselves of no slight importance. Along the lower 

 Mississippi from St. Louis to the Gulf all three problems urgently 

 demand attention, since this portion of the river represents the trunk 

 line of the entire deep waterways system; and it is just here that the 

 physical conditions surrounding the river make correction or control 

 the most difficult. 



From St. Louis southward, the river course follows a broad alluvial 

 plain, which gradually increases in width to about 100 miles near the 

 Gulf. This broad river flat is composed of a soft, highly-productive 

 soil, fine-grained and of indefinite depth, in which the river has devel- 

 oped such a tortuous course that while the air-line distance from Cairo 



