Winter Meeting. 293 



SOUTHEAST MISSOUKI AND ITS KESOUECES.— POSSI- 

 BILITIES OF FEUIT GEOWIXG. 



Perhaps no section of country has been more thoroughly misrep- 

 resented or more generally misunderstood than southeast Missouri. 



The word is scattered generally all over our state and many other 

 places besides, that southeast Missouri is a dismal swamp; when the 

 truth is that only ten counties in the extreme southeast portion have any 

 wet or so-called swamp land at all. The reason I call them "so-called 

 swamp lands" is because only seven of them have any wet or so-called 

 swamps, while they present only about one-fourth of their entire area 

 as subject to overflow, and much of this is of a wet nature and not caused 

 by overflow. These low lands are all being drained by large ditches, 

 I)eing digged by steam machinery under the Missouri ditch law, which is 

 an exact copy of the Ind. ditch law, which reclaimed so much of the wet 

 lands of that state, and made it the finest agricultural and fruit land in 

 all the state of Indiana. 



Several drainage enterprises are now under headway costing all 

 the way from $50,000 to $100,000 each, and when these ditches are all 

 complete, which will be in the near future, these rich, level bottom lands 

 will be the finest agricultural, stock and fruit lands in the world; and 

 their fertility will simply be inexhaustable, while the value of these 

 lands "will be realized only by men of the keenest perceptions. 



Please hear what a civil engineer has to say on the so-called swamp 

 lands, after having been there and did much surveying for the ditches 

 being dug: "Of actual swamps, but a few thousand acres can be found 

 in southeast Missouri. The area subject to occasional overflow has been 

 reduced half within a few years by mill men cleaning the river of 'rafts' 

 and when an inexpensive system of ditching is introduced it will all be 

 tillable. It is as easily drained as were the prairies of Illinois and In- 

 diana. 



In every instance where the clearings have been extended across 

 the slashes the water lias disappeared and the land has become safely 

 tillable. 



The bottom lands are loose and easy of cultivation and can often 

 be plowed every montli in the year. 



