THE GREAT RIVER THEN AND NOW 89 



the bed-bug poison the clerk bought at LaCrosse to kill 

 the bugs in his room, but I forgot to use it." Shipley 

 said, "Throw it in the river for we might make a mis- 

 take and get it in the pudding sauce, and make some of 

 the rousters sick." "No," replied Harry, "it might 

 make some of them sick, but no danger of it killing 

 them. They could season their cabbage with paris 

 green and enjoy it." We did not find any more bed- 

 bugs on the boat, so I can safely recommend corrosive 

 sublimate as an effective remedy. 



The water was very low in August and September, 

 1878. Packets and raft-boats were having much trouble 

 on the crossing from Queen's Bluff over to Hammond 

 Chute (one of the mouths of Black river). Here the 

 current, leaving the bluff, spread out over a wide, shal- 

 low bar. This situation was remedied by a long, low, 

 cheap dam, of willow mattresses and broken rock, 

 which narrowed the channel, and caused it to scour, or 

 cut deeper. 



This is the first "wing" dam I can recall. I think it 

 was the first one on the Upper Mississippi. Its success 

 led to the adoption of the system of improvement in 

 vogue since that time. Wing dams, with their bases on 

 shore and projecting out into the stream from one side 

 of the river, or both, carry out the "jetty" plan of Cap- 

 tain Eads, which he used so successfully in deepening 

 the channel through the South Pass into the Gulf of 

 Mexico. 



Now (in 1927) we have three hundred wing dams in 

 the thirty miles between Prescott, Minnesota, and Saint 

 Paul. There are over four hundred between Winona 

 and Wabasha, Minnesota, a distance of forty miles, and 

 they are quite numerous all the way down the Missis- 

 sippi as far south as the mouth of the Missouri. In ad- 



