1901.] HAUPT — METHODS OF IMPROVING OCEAN BAR i. 69 



unwise recommendation that " A single jetty on this principle at 

 Brunswick would be located on the south side of the channel, since 

 the drifting sands come from the north." 



Such a location, if followed, would in the writer's opinion be 

 ruinous to the commerce of that port. Its estimated cost is 



It is certain that it would dam up the channel and push the bar 

 to the sea with the same or less depth than previously existed, as 

 happened to the Government plans at Aransas Pass and Galveston 

 during construction, also at Cumberland Sound where the south 

 jetty, projecting to leeward, has entirely obliterated the old channel 

 and made it necessary to open a new one by dredging away a part 

 of that jetty and opening a passage to a new crossing under 

 its lee. This experiment, as shown in Senate Document No. 163, 

 Fifty-fifth Congress, First Session, should have sufficed to illustrate 

 completely the results to be anticipated from such a proposition for 

 Brunswick, where, it is stated, there 'Ms an enormous sandbank 

 which moves and which always moves very positively in one 

 direction." 



So pronounced was the failure at Cumberland Sound, after twenty 

 years of study and experiment and the appropriation of #1,787,500, 

 that in 1897 Congress called for a report to ascertain whether an 

 emergency appropriation should not be made "to protect the 

 entrance from being closed against commerce." In the report 

 made in pursuance of the resolution, the officer then in charge 

 stated : " The navigable bar channel has deserted the desired route 

 entirely, the present channel crossing the south jetty about 7000 

 feet seaward of its initial point." Also the bar crossing is now 

 " nearly half a mile south of the outer end of the jetty " and the 

 " least depths are somewhat less than thirteen feet." This was the 

 natural depth. The comparative maps in this report show that 

 instead of the channel remaining in its original position as it 

 should have done, according to the theory of the author, it was 

 actually driven across the intercepting jetty and sought its nor- 

 mal position along the line of least resistance in its lee, thus 

 bringing the jetty to windward, where it should have been placed 

 at first. 



Thus Nature would teach Science, if the latter would but learn to 

 interpret her results correctly. A more complete illustration can 

 hardly be found of the soundness of the theory of interposing the 



