288 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



dam from 10 to 12 feet high should be at least 50 feet wide at the bot- 

 tom, with a long slope both ways. A fatal mistake is often made in 

 making the dam too steep. When properly made the constant tramp- 

 ing of the horses, especially if the soil is moist, will so toughen the 

 soil that it will resist washing of the water more than most people 

 will believe. I have one dam over which the water has run for years, 

 whenever it rains very hard, yet have not lost as much soil as I can 

 put back in one day. Now, mind you. this can be done on the farm 

 when no other work can be done, on days when it is too wet to work 

 at anything else. Have a scraper of your own, go and do a half or a 

 day's work as you can now and then, and soon you will be surprised at 

 what is accomplished*. 



If every farmer could hold back as much water on his place as 

 I do we would have in our county (Oteo, Nebraska), alone 10,368 acres 

 surface of water, and as soon as they filled with soil wash there 

 would be 10,386 acres of the finest meadow soil in the world, worth at 

 least |50 per acre. Then we have brought into actual worth $519,400 

 In our county alone, and that, too, from the waste places, and there 

 .are thousands upon thousands of such places throughout our land. 



We heard the other day that our county had lost $50,000 worth of 

 bridges by recent rains. Now, if this flood of water had been par- 

 tially held back, much of this heavy loss might have been prevented. 



We are told that the Mississippi river is carrying into the Gulf of 

 Mexico a body of dirt equal to a block of earth six feet in diameter mov - 

 ing at the rate of four miles per hour, year in and year out, night and 

 day, or in other words, depositing in the gulf 12 acres of surface soil 

 per hour, or 288 acres every twenty- four hours; again we can say, the 

 cream of our broad acres! When I started out on this line of thought 

 I had no idea where it would lead; the subject is startling. Our gov- 

 ernment and the states bordering on the Mississippi river are spend- 

 ing millions upon millions to get rid of what is such a loss to us. We 

 are asking the government to spend more millions to build big reser-. 

 voirs and dams in the west to conserve the surplus water till the day 

 of need. By far better let the millions of farmers create on their own 

 little farms, ponds, lakelets and pools, and far greater results will 

 accrue to the fairest of Uncle Sam's domain Nebraska, Iowa, Kan- 

 sas and Missouri. 



Mr. Clayton, living near the mouth of Camp Creek on the Peru 

 bottoms, twelve miles below Nebraska City, has caught soil- wash to 

 a great extent. This year alone he has caught eighteen inches on an 

 eighty acre piece, and has this year two hundred acres of corn above 

 high water mark, where a few years ago there was a slough or low 

 bottom land. On this piece of land there is a fill of about eight feet. 

 If you please, how many hill farms has this impoverished? This 



