FOREST LANDS FOR THE PROTECTION OF WATERSHEDS. 55 



mouth of the Connecticut River. At that point it is building a shoal 

 straight off to sea on the east side of the mouth of the river, being 

 one and one-half miles shoaling water, to as shoal as three feet on 

 the crest of the bar, and where the buoy guards the outer edge you 

 immediately drop off to 120 feet. I am now looking to south. Look- 

 ing to the east, that bar extends five miles to the eastward. The 

 extensions are going on at the outskirts. 



Looking soundward, over between the jetties at the mouth of the 

 river, we have about 3 miles out the long sand shoals, which takes 

 that portion and carries it to the west. That is 6 miles long, and 

 there is a passage between that and the main shore. It lies pretty 

 nearly in mid sound. That drops off into water from 8 to 12 feet, 

 but 150 feet abreast of the light-vessel that is placed there to guard 

 it, called " Cornfield light shoal vessel." It might be thought that 

 the constant action in washing this sand off to sea must eventually 

 blockade the mouth of the river. I noticed that the chairman spoke 

 this morning of the Columbia River. I know that the Connecticut 

 River, when you have extended this shoal off 1^ miles from shore 

 and have practically made a dam a mile and a half into the Sound, 

 you have so confined the easterly and westerly flows of those tides 

 past the Connecticut River, that from that day forward the rapidity 

 and force of the current past the eastern buoy and the western spar 

 on the Cornfield Shoal would have such great rapidity that at least 

 2 feet in three years on each tide of water is a mass of moving 

 smooth sand, rolling over and over, and coming to the surface in 

 perfect piles; so if the Connecticut River continued to discharge this 

 great mass forever, there would be no use of farther -building at 

 this point toward the west. The extension would be to the east and 

 west, I know that 20 miles to the westward and eastward, as it 

 moves out of this rapid current, it never gets back toward the Con- 

 necticut River, but it does line the shore for all those miles with 

 every southwest storm or southeast storm. It is driven on the shore 

 until the shore now extends 20 miles to the westward and 30 to the 

 eastward. There is no alluvial mud in it. 



Now, Mr. Chairman, if there is any other matter that I could help 

 you at all on, or that you would like to ask me, for my experience 

 is all in marine work, and consequently I do not think I am able to 

 help you much otherwise, I will be glad to answer any questions. I 

 will say this, that on that same long sand shoal in thirty-five years 

 there have been more than 20 vessels wrecked, of which my own 

 fleet furnished 2. 



The CHAIRMAN. Has there been any material change in that time 

 in the area of cultivated land along the watershed of this river ? 



Mr. GOODRICH. I do not think that in the forty years that the cul- 

 tivated area has increased any. The fact is that the great meadows 

 there are level, and when a 20-foot freshet floods them they are 

 greatly productive of fine grass, but I will say that not 20 per cent 

 of these meadows are cultivated. The country further back is culti- 

 vated to a greater or less extent, but not so greatly as to foul the dis- 

 charge in the river. Our water finds its way to the sea, with the 

 exception of a short time, perhaps a month in a year, in a very clear 

 and cleanly flow. 



Mr. HARVEY. The next speaker will be Mr. McFarland, president 

 of the American Civic Association. 



