Meteorological Journal at Marietta, Ohio, Jor 1847. 253 
by the 11th, both rivers had risen twenty feet. On the 13th, the 
water was over all the banks, and by the 14th was at its height, 
lacking only five feet of the great flood of 1882, and was only 
prevented from an equal elevation by the smaller amount of rain 
on the heads of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers, which 
streams were not unusually high. It is singular that the floods 
of 1813 and 1815 were both of the same elevation as that of 
1847, differing only a few inches. On the night of the 14th De- 
cember, there fell four inches of snow at Marietta, and eighteen 
inches at Cincinnati, where the water was within a foot of the 
tise of 1832. The Muskingum was as high at Zanesville as in 
the latter year, and did far more damage, sweeping the bottom 
lands of the crops of com, from its heads to the mouth, as a large 
portion of this valuable grain was yet standing in shocks on the 
ground where it grew. For twenty-four hours the surface of the 
river was covered with floating stacks of grain, hay and corn, with 
now and then a log cabin and masses of fencing stuff. Mr. Dana 
of Waterford, twenty miles above Marietta, lost one thousand 
sheep, nearly all ewes, of the finest Merino and Saxony blocd, 
drowned in the waters which overflowed the bottoms in the night. 
Immense damage was done to the slack water improvement of 
the Muskingum, by the flood cutting channels round several of 
the dams, forming a new bed for the river. At Pittsburgh and 
Wheeling the water was fifteen or twenty feet below that of 1532, 
but on all the borders below the mouth of the Muskingum, the | 
loss was incalenlable to the farmers, sweeping away their crops of 
grain and hay, with all their fences, leaving them destitute of food 
for their cattle and horses, which can only be saved from starva- 
tion by driving them back into the hill region, beyond the ore 
of the flood, where there is an abundance for all the stock. At 
the mouth of the Scioto River, the water was as high as in 1832, 
the borders of that stream being flooded from its head to its junc- 
ion with the Ohio, destroying thousands of cattle and hogs, as 
well as the crops. In its effects, the flood of 1847 was more a 
astrous than any former one, as it came at So early a period in me 
Winter, before the crops could be applied to the use of ea Mi 
. Several millions of dollars would not make good the lo . 
to the country. Mills and bridges without number pe 
away, while the roads are left impassable from the — — ? 
Opening a winter of great distress to the dwellers in the ¥ “4 
of our western streams. As the bottom lands become more “at 
ed of the trees, which clothe them like a garment, it 1s pro oH 
that the rise of water in the rivers will be somewhat con arene 
at least one-eighth of the surface is occupied by the trunks of oi 
trees, and when removed, it will take more water to cover the 
bottoms. 
