[7] 



their surroundings waving with broom sedge instead of bread crops ? 

 Have not whole plantations tumbled bodily into gullies, almost beyond 

 the reach of any practically possible reclamation? the hills denuded 

 of soil and even subsoil, and the fertile valleys overrun with a flood of 

 arid sand, where but a few years ago we had lively streams running 

 between high banks all the year round through fields waving with 

 corn and cotton. 



THE SAND SCOURGE. 



In those portions of the State which are comparatively exempt from 

 the sand scourge, the extent of injury inflicted by it on other districts 

 would hardly be believed. In some portions of Marshall and Benton 

 counties, lately visited by me, it has assumed the character of a public 

 calamity. The turning-out of worn hillside land during the war re 

 sulted in the formation of innumerable hillside gullies, which, so soon 

 as the quicksand is reached, at the depth of a few feet, widen with 

 fearful rapidity, not only by washing, but by caving. The hard, un 

 protected and untilled surface of the land sheds a much larger propor 

 tion of rain water than formerly, and much more rapidly, into these 

 gullies; from which, during heavy rains, a tumbling, gruel-like mass of 

 sand and water emerges upon the valleys. 



Before the war, the then comparatively slight danger of inundation 

 by sand was averted by straightening the channels of the streams, 

 thus increasing their power of carrying off the sand poured into them 

 from hillside rills. But now, the quantity of sand has so greatly in 

 creased, that not only have the old valley ditches been filled up, but it 

 is extremely doubtful whether any amount of labor likely to be at the 

 command of private individuals, could have kept, or keep them open. 

 The huge volumes of sand carried down from the hills must lodge 

 somewhere, and ruin somebody s land. Each land owner blames his 

 neighbor above or below him, as the case may be ; and the law-suits 

 resulting therefrom would be legion, but for the fact that each one 

 being to blame himself, more or less, for precisely the same omissions, 

 all parties would in the end fare about alike. 



There is not, probably, an upland county in the State where we may 

 not find abundant examples of the same general character; resulting 

 in the most serious injury to the uplands, and the same, or worse, to 

 the smaller valleys. 



What we see in Marshall, Benton and Lafayette, we find repeated 

 with lamentable exactness in Winston, Lauderdale and Jasper, in 



