220 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



stone to the mouth, is an inclined plane of sand, not a rock or gravel shoal in 

 the entire distance, nor a rapid. Its banks are for the entire distance alluvial 

 and are abraded with the smallest force of current and rapidly dissolved. The 

 problem, from this fact, is not to deepen the channel by removing bars, rocks, or 

 deepening shoals after the method in the other rivers, but to prevent abrasion 

 and confine the waters at given points to a narrower channel, when it deepens 

 itself. 



It is not my purpose to be tedious as to the characteristics of the river, only 

 to state them broadly, so as to show the methods to be employed. The same 

 plan of appropriations that is employed in the Ohio and Upper Mississippi, is not, 

 for this reason, applicable to the Missouri. In the former given points are selected 

 and appropriations made for each. The same plan has been adopted heretofore 

 in the Missouri, and no good results have followed. The present bill is the first 

 that recognized the true method, and I take this occasion to thank the Committee 

 on Commerce for its wise and statesmanlike action. The appropriation is in bulk, 

 to be applied continuously, so as each year to complete a section of the river in a 

 permanent manner. 



Allow me, Mr. Chairman, to briefly sketch the character of the Missouri 

 River. From its sandy bed and the alluvial character of great valley through 

 which it flows its course is serpentine, from bluff to blufl". When the current 

 strikes a bluff, where it meets the rocky barriers that underlie all the bluff" forma- 

 tions of that valley, it shoots off by a sharp curve across the alluvial bottom-lands 

 until it impinges on the opposite bluff, to repeat the same indefinitely. 



Now, the fact is, that where the river washes the base of a bluff it is narrow 

 and deep, with abundance of water in the channel for the heaviest transportation 

 possible to the business to be done. But when it leaves a bluff to cross the bot- 

 tom to another bluff, by the abrasion of the banks it is widened, sometimes from 

 1,200 to 1,500 feet under the bluff to a mile and a half on bottoms. The enlarge- 

 ment of the channel retards the current, creates eddies by the friction interposed 

 by the shoaling process, precipitating the sand and soil held in suspension, and 

 bars and shallows are the result. It is a curious fact that this law of the river re- 

 sults in giving to the river one general feature that characterizes its centre course. 

 This is a succession of pools along the bluffs, with shallower channels connecting 

 these pools, the pools overlapping, or extending uniformly above the point of con- 

 nection with the cross channels. 



Now, the problem is to'prevent the excessive widening of these cross-chan- 

 nels, or to confine the abrasion within limits that will produce a depth of channel 

 adequate to the demands of navigation. For example : If the pools have at 

 low water a depth of 20 to 30 feet, as they have as a rule, with a width of 1,500 

 feet, by confining the cross channel of a mile or a mile and a half with four feet 

 of water to half a mile, we have a channel of 12 feet — the problem is solved. I 

 use these figures as comparative. 



