IMPROVEMENT OF THE MISSOURI AND MISSISSIPPI RIVERS. 221 



Now, can this be done? The engineering skill of the country says it can, 

 and the practical experience and observation of river men agree with the en- 

 gineers. In fact they see it done in detail every year. 



The real facts which call for the improvement of the river arise from the irreg- 

 ular operation of the same principle. If the snags, steamboat wrecks, and other 

 obstructions in the channel of the Missouri had been methodically deposited they 

 would have solved the problem long ago, and to-day we would have had deep 

 and permanent navigation in the river. That this is not overstating the case 

 scores of examples exist along its course where a lodged tree or a sunken boat 

 has radically changed the course and character of the river for miles, in instances 

 improving the navigation of the river exactly as the engineers now propose to do, 

 but when the elements were adverse, carrying destruction and devastation in 

 their wake. In fact it is the accumulated evidence afforded by these accidental 

 obstructions upon which the engineers have based their p an of improvement. 



There is only one thing to do to prevent the unnecessary washing of the banks 

 at these points of crossing referred to, and the river will take care of itself. If the 

 banks of Missouri were of the character of those of the Ohio, with its bed of sand, 

 it would have always been the finest navigable river of the continent. Facts ex- 

 ist all along its course for a thousand miles that demonstrate that even its debris, 

 where lodged favorably by accident, has done just what it is proposed to do under 

 this appropriation. I cannot state it more simply or more forcibly than by say- 

 ing that it is proposed to follow the example of the river itself in these improve- 

 ments. There are places in the river to-day that if the snags in one bend were 

 deposited systematically along a few hundred feet of cross channel, boats for fifty 

 miles would find at all seasons a depth of water ample for all purposes of naviga- 

 tion. 



I think I have stated the elements of the problem involved in the improve- 

 ment of the Missouri River sufficiently broadly to give the h use an idea of the 

 plan, and why the appropriation asked for has been given in bulk to be expend- 

 ed, not in removing bars, rocks or shoals from the channel, but in controlling 

 the vagaries of the current or the waters, and allow them to do at exceptional 

 points exactly what they do in the general channel of the river. There is not a 

 single feature of the river proper to be changed, no interference with its laws or 

 any of its peculiar characteristics. It simply is proposed to leave it as nature 

 would have it if its banks had been less alluvial or capable of a little more resist- 

 ance to the abrading force of its waters. 



The problem, as an engineering one, is based upon the true principle of aid- 

 ing nature, rather than resisting her forces. It is proposed to let the river take 

 care of its own improvement. Its waters are the force employed. It is not pro- 

 posed to provide new banks or confine its waters within mud walls — only to con- 

 centrate at the exceptional points its waters, that the volume may as elsewhere 

 deepen their own channel. 



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