Carson.] «54: [Dec. 6, 



■width, which is mostly below the level of the floods. In extent the valley 

 of the Mississippi is equal in surface to all Europe, except Russia, Norway 

 and Sweden. It has no topographical obstructions. It contains immense 

 navigable rivers, and is connected with vast inland seas. A great his- 

 torian, with the inspiration of a prophet and the fire of a poet, has predicted 

 that "with such a varied and splendid entourage — an imperial cordon of 

 States — nothing can prevent the Mississippi valley from becoming in less 

 than three generations the centi'e of human power."* The problem of 

 protection against overflow is the great practical question involving the 

 prosperity of that entire region. Millions of dollars had been fruitlessly 

 expended by the States of Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, through 

 want of concert, want of knowledge and misdirected and divided effort. 

 Politics, too, embroiled the results, so that when, in September, 1850, the 

 Federal Government granted to the several States bordering on the river 

 all the swamp and overflowed lands within their limits, remaining unsold, 

 in order to provide a fund to reclaim the districts liable to inundation, 

 the planters in the lower valley of the river, alarmed lest the effect of the 

 reclamation of vast swamps above should tend' to increase the floods below, 

 invoked the aid of the General Government in the necessary surveys for 

 investigating the matter. From this movement the Delta Survey took its 

 origin. f 



From the beginning the work was in charge of Captain Humphreys. 

 He began field operations in November, 1850, but was compelled by 

 severe illness, occasioned by exposure and overwork in surveying, to sus- 

 pend them in the summer of 18")!. He long remained an invalid, and 

 upon his recovery was overwhelmed with other professional duties — 

 among which may be named the general charge of all the Pacific Rail- 

 road surveys — so that the river work was not resumed until 1857. From 

 that time, at his own request, he had the assistance of Lieutenant H. 

 L. Abbot, to whom, with rare and characteristic liberality, he attributed 

 an equal share in the authorship of the work. In his letter to the Bureau, 

 Captain Humphi'eys, in speaking of the work, says: "It involved an 

 amount of labor and study which will not, perhaps, be fully appreciated 

 even by professional persons." 



A scheme of field observations was devised covering a multitude and 

 variety of observations in a vast region of more than one and a quarter 

 millions of square miles, including the basins of the eight principal tribu- 

 taries of the I'iver, draining the entire "surface between the Rocky moun- 

 tains and the Alleghenies — the Missouri, Ohio, Upper Mississippi, Arkan- 

 sas, Red, White, Yazoo, and St. Francis. The work was distributed 

 among topographical, hydrographical and hydrometrical parties. An 



* History of the American Civil War, by John William Draper, M.D., LL.D, 

 Vol.1, pp. 62. 



X In the preparation of this account I have been assisted in my study of the 

 original work by an able and exhaustive review of tlie Keport of Humphrej-s 

 and Abbot, by Edwin Hale Abbot, A.M., reprinted from the North American 

 Review, April, 1862. 



