542 STEVENSON— FORMATION OF COAL BEDS. [November 3. 



immediately set about replanting. The great flood had done little 

 injury, had hardly disturbed the soil of cultivated fields. 



Frankenfield tells the same story for the flood of 1903. The 

 sunken area of New Madrid was filled and the water, being more or 

 less ponded, left deposits of sand. In the lower Mississippi area, 

 crevasses permitted great overflow, but there was no injury to farms, 

 aside from drowning of the crops, for which there was ample com- 

 pensation in the form of a rich alluvial deposit. The Ohio river 

 was more than two miles wide in many places between Cairo and 

 Louisville. Near Evansville, Indiana, 300,000 acres of maize and 

 30,000 acres of wheat were covered, but the only loss was that of 

 3,000 acres by drowning. The local observer at Evansville reported 

 that the damage would have been much greater if the water had not 

 remained in constant motion. At Topeka in Kansas, the flood was 

 diverted from the river by obstructions piled against a railroad 

 bridge and the water, loaded with sand, swept over a wide area. 

 Crops were ruined and the nursery fields near Topeka v>-ere covered 

 with sand which buried the young trees. These instances are merelv 

 illustrations of conditions prevailing throughout the whole area. 



The reports contain no reference to the disastrous efl^ects of such 

 floods upon areas covered with forest or otherwise protected by 

 close vegetable growth, which at first glance seemed strange, be- 

 cause wooded areas occupy much of the lowland or bottom regions. 

 But the omission was due not to neglect but to absence of anvthing 

 to record. Reproductions of photographs given by Frankenfield 

 and Morrill show that trees and even shrubs were undisturbed amid 

 the rush of water and coarse sand. The writer asked the former 

 for information respecting the matter. The reply was 



" During the Mississippi floods no forests are uprooted and no bogs are 

 torn away. A considerable quantity of sand is sometimes carried down and 

 deposited when the velocity of the water decreases, either by contact with 

 obstruction or by reason of decrease in inclination of the floodplain. It is of 

 course conceivable that the mass of water rushing through a crevasse carries 

 away a quantity of vegetable matter and perhaps some trees, but the area 

 would necessarily be limited. The true Mississippi flood moves along very 

 sedately, carrying only the enormous amount of alluvial matter in suspension, 

 but very little indeed of foreign matter. Previous to the era of levee con- 



140 



