1901] HAUPT — METHODS OF IMPROVING OCEAN" BARS. 83 



400 feet wide be used there is found to be a net fill of 77,000 

 cubic yards ; for 600 feet width the fill is 113,000 cubic yards; for 

 800 feet it is 166,000, and for 1000 feet width it is 208,000 yards — 

 in every case a fill, yet between the dates taken for this comparison 

 the channel passing through this strip was deepened by dynamite, 

 between April, 1891, and February, 1897, from 13.3 to 16.6 feet, 

 a gain in depth of 3.3 feet. 



Had the contractor been paid for excavation by place measure- 

 ment for this area, therefore, he would have had to go into 

 bankruptcy, since over 200,000 yards more were deposited than 

 removed, and yet a deeper channel was created. 



Moreover the dredging was not begun until August, 1896, and 

 then it was merely to pump the material into the current until the 

 fall of 1897, when bins were used to carry it out to sea, by which 

 time the depths were increased nearly four feet. Even after this 

 dynamite in 100-pound charges continued to be used, so that it is 

 incorrect to regard this as a dredged channel when 168,000 pounds 

 of explosives had been used to secure it. 



Furthermore the report states (p. 17) : " The north shoal has cer- 

 tainly been moving south for the last forty years About 



1,500,000 cubic yards have been added to its southern face since 

 1891." . . . . Also, "the north face of the south breakers .... has 

 been scouring away correspondingly to the growth of the north 

 shoal since 1857, and quite rapidly since 1888 (about 3,000,000 

 cubic yards and 1000 feet in width, scoured away between 1888 or 

 1890 and 1897 or 1900)." These admissions show large move- 

 ments of bar material and an excess of about 1,500,000 cubic yards 

 of scour during this period, and in the vicinity of dynamite ope- 

 rations, yet it is claimed that the deepening wa's " probably due 

 to natural causes." 



It would be a remarkable freak of nature that, with a bar drifting 

 from north to south, there should have been a deposit of 1,500,000 

 yards on the one hand, and a scour of 3,000,000 yards on the other, 

 between which a channel might have been dredged by the removal of 

 125,000 yards at a cost of $18,750, which would have been per- 

 manent, or else that "nature" should have concluded to reverse 

 her machinery without apparent cause, and that, too, just at the time 

 when dynamite was applied to the deteriorating bar, all for the 

 benefit of a contractor who had previously undertaken to create a 

 channel by the use of high explosives to save the port from ruin. 



