FOREST LANDS FOB THE PROTECTION OF WATERSHEDS. 51 



three or four times the amount of water a square mile during the 

 low-water period, the time that you need water for water power 

 purposes or for navigation, and you would be surprised to find how 

 close two streams are and how much they will vary in flow. But 

 that can be in each case traced absolutely to the amount of cleared 

 land that you have in the drainage area of that particular stream. 



The other point that I wanted to go over slightly was the silt or 

 sand that is deposited by these streams. I remember very distinctly 

 about twelve years ago I was on a water-power plant on the Seneca 

 River, just above the junction of the Seneca and the Tallulah, where 

 the Savannah River is formed, between North Carolina and Georgia. 

 The Seneca River was a little to the east, yet went back into the moun- 

 tains the same as the Tallulah. This river was always muddy, or 

 carried a great deal of silt and sand. The Tallulah River, that came 

 into the Savannah, was a clear stream. There was sand and silt all 

 up the Seneca River. The Tallulah River had very little, if any, 

 but since that time the Tallulah River is each year gradually becom- 

 ing muddier and carrying more silt farther up. 



The CHAIRMAN. Has that come from the clearing of farm land or 

 from lumbering operations? 



Mr. LEE. That is from both. There is a great deal of lumbering 

 going on in that immediate section, and this land was only farmed 

 for two or three years. Where this timber is cut off the ground is very 

 rich from the deposit of trees, and you can grow a crop for two or 

 three years very profitably, and then it soon washes away, and there 

 are plenty of those slopes that are cleared merely for the purpose of 

 getting two or three crops off them. 



The CHAIRMAN. Then there would be a return to the forest ? 



Mr. LEE. Yes; they are abandoned and go through a process of 

 going back to the forest. If they are not too steep they will eventually 

 reforest themselves. I do not know that I should care to discuss any 

 other points. 



STATEMENT OF MR. D. A. TOMPKINS, OF CHARLOTTE, N. C., PRESI- 

 DENT OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN ASSOCIATION. 



Mr. TOMPKINS. Mr. Chairman, the phase of this subject that I will 

 undertake to touch upon is the same as Mr. Lee has spoken upon, 

 but from a little different point of view. I have had the water power 

 for a company in North Carolina on one of the streams for ten years, 

 and built a cotton mill to use the water power. I took very great 

 pains to get what was the preceding high- water mark, in order that 

 we could put the mill floor above the possibility of water getting 

 into it, and we made an allowance of 3 feet. Within the period that 

 this mill has been built there has been a constant denudation of the 

 forest on account of timbering and other things, and the high- water 

 mark has been constantly rising until the last flow came within 6 

 inches of the floor which we had put about 3 feet above the high- 

 water mark. At the same time, in the interim of the floods, the 

 water that goes over the dam has diminished certainly one-third, 

 making wider and wider variation between the water that can be 

 used all the year for power and the water that comes as a flood. This 

 is not only applicable in that particular case, but it is applicable in 



