80 HAUPT — THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM. [Feb. 19, 



banks, and no faith in high levees to improve the navigation at low 

 stages. 



Consideration of the problem continued and many of the most 

 experienced engineers on the works participated in the discussion. 



The local Levee Boards of the several States were obliged to con- 

 tinue their protection works, which were assuming greater propor- 

 tions as the system was extended, and great pressure was brought to 

 bear upon the general Government to aid in the work of defending 

 the arable land from overflow, and thus confine the floods to the 

 narrower channel between the artificial banks. 



As a matter of record it is important to note the arguments 

 advanced by the competent and conscientious men in charge of 

 these works. 



In November, 1892, the Chief Engineer of the Yazoo Levee 

 Board stated that '' tlie levee system, which is the one now in 

 vogue, has been objected to on several grounds — that it was very 

 costly, that it was very dangerous, and that it exposed the river to 

 deterioration from the confinement of silt, causing the deposition of 

 silt in the bed of the stream." 



In reply to these objections he says that up to that time the cost 

 would probably be covered by ^35,000,000, and that to build the 

 levees to a height now (1892) considered sufficient, namely, five feet 

 above the highest recorded floods, would require some $20,000,000 

 more. He adds there is no difficulty in making levees that will 

 secure against disaster. The flood of 1892 was one foot higher than 

 ever before, but there was no break along the Yazoo front ; and the 

 third objection, as to elevation of bed, he repudiates as opposed to 

 all testimony. 



In his report on the flood of 1903, his successor, also an engineer 

 of long experience on the river, states that the present flood reached 

 a stage exactly three feet above that of 1897, and was prevented 

 from reaching a higher point by the two large crevasses which 

 occurred in the St. Francis basin levees two or three days before 

 the culmination of the flood at Memphis. Correcting for this and 

 the lower gauge reading at Cairo, the present rise might have reached 

 an elevation of four feet above that of 1897. Below Burk's Land- 

 ing, within the next few miles, are four unclosed crevasses that 

 occurred in 1897, aggregating over a mile in width. There was 

 a crevasse at Rescue Landing in 1897, which lowered the stage 

 locally nearly one foot. He suggests that the grade line of 1897, 



