essary for the water to rise and rush 

 forward with greater violence. 



Year by year the levees have crept 

 up the sides of the great river, choking 

 it into narrow walls. Year after year it 

 has risen in its wrath and burst its 

 bounds to destroy the cities and plan- 

 tations which have been fattening in 

 the mud of its alluvial flats. Every 

 year the levees are put up higher, and 

 as the works extend to the northward 

 and more effectually close up the 

 southern places of spreading out there 

 is an average increase in the stage of 

 high water and in velocity of the cur- 

 rent. When it was allowed to wan- 

 der over great stretches of country the 

 water seemed in no hurry to get to the 

 gulf, but now it goes tearing madly 

 through its narrowed banks, and it has 

 become a question with Congress which 

 will take much deliberation and experi- 

 ment as well as great financial outlay 

 to solve. 



It has been proposed that great res- 

 ervoirs be constructed in the mountain 

 districts ^o hold back the waters that 

 are wasted in their rush to the sea. If 

 there could be made in the Bad Lands 

 in northern Wyoming a reservoir that 

 would hold all the waters accumulating 

 there during the months of spring, that 

 reservoir would "skim off" the top of 

 the Mississippi river two thousand 

 miles away and save the people there 

 from the perils that threaten them 

 whenever the water mounts toward the 

 danger-point. 



It would require a vast artificial lake 

 to hold these waters, but there are 

 mountain ranges that could be utilized 

 to form the barriers and the land taken 

 from profitable grazing could be paid 

 for with much less expense than the 

 cost of one inundation of Mississippi 

 bottom lands when a levee breaks. 



Instead of one vast reservoir it will 

 probably be found expedient to lay out 

 a great number of works for retaining 

 the western waters, as well as others in 

 the eastern mountains and some in the 

 beds of other tributary rivers whose 

 sources are in the great basin between. 



If these stores of water could be 

 utilized for irrigation it is probable that 

 the works would eventuall}^ pay for 

 themselves in the increase in value of 



cultivated lands. The water at present 

 is largely wasted because it rushes past 

 the lands that need it before their dis- 

 tress of drouth comes, and its bulk is 

 fairly spent when they need most the 

 water that has passed. Adequate sys- 

 tems of reservoirs would also prevent 

 largely the wearing away of banks and 

 the changing of the course of the chan- 

 nel and even of the river itself which 

 now sometimes tears away the founda- 

 tions of cities, obliterates landmarks, 

 and carries off bodily many well-tilled 

 farms. Navigation could be much im- 

 proved if the stages of high water could 

 be moderated. 



The Kansas farmer complained that 

 the Missouri river is too thick to drink 

 and too thin to plow. Control of sur- 

 plus water near the sources would 

 make this river so moderate that com- 

 merce would move along its surface. 

 Varying moods and shifting sands now 

 prevent navigation on that great river 

 almost completely. 



The Chinese have a problem similar 

 to ours. Their government esteems 

 their board of public works as one of 

 the highest in their country. This 

 board has charge of the canals and em- 

 bankments along the great rivers. But 

 it is a Chinese board. 



The Hoang Ho resembles our great 

 water course in that it rises in moun- 

 tains and flows for hundreds of miles 

 through comparatively level country 

 in its lower courses. It deposits mud 

 along its way through the great plain 

 so that the people are continually 

 obliged to construct levees higher and 

 higher until nature no longer will put 

 up with such treatment and the great 

 yellow river breaks its bonds and 

 travels across the country to find a 

 new outlet at the seacoast. 



In 2500 years it has altered its gen- 

 eral course nine times with terrible de- 

 struction of life and property. Its last 

 great breach occurred in 1887, when it 

 tore through the empire a new channel 

 that caused its waters to reach the sea 

 through the mouth of the Yangtse- 

 kiang five hundred miles away from its 

 present mouth. More than a million 

 lives were lost and the devastation of 

 the country has never been approxi- 

 mately estimated. The gap torn in 



175 



