330 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



plete protection four years out of five. When they are insufficient, the excess 

 must be allowed to pass the line of the levee by weirs with revetted slopes, so 

 that the water can be safely transported without injury to the levee. This sys- 

 tem has been succesfuUy employed in France. To discharge 1,000,000 cubic 

 feet per second with a three -foot depth on the weir would require a weir about 

 eleven miles long. The weir must be located where the facilities for carrying off 

 the water are best, or in the vicinity of the old natural outlets from the channel 

 to the swamps. There are many such natural outlets, some of large size, such as 

 the Yazoo Pass. These would only required to be cleared and they would then 

 enlarge, as the Atchafalaya has done, and so this overflow water might be trans- 

 ported away from the river bank without flooding the plantations. When the 

 water escapes over the banks now it must find its way through tangled forests 

 and canebrakes as best it may, and the result is it rises till it includes all in one 

 vast inland sea, and stands as high behind the levee as in front of it. This method 

 of protection is deserving of the attention of the Commission and should be care- 

 fully studied. 



II. The Outlet System. — Capt. John Cowdon, of New Orleans, whose 

 name has been made prominent as the projector of the Lake Borgne outlet plan, 

 for the improvement of the low water navigation of the Mississippi River and trib- 

 utaries, and the reclamation of the valley lands from overflow without the use of 

 levees, spent several days last month in this city in the interest of his projected 

 enterprise. He holds that Kansas City, being in direct communication with the 

 Mississippi River below flood lines via the Kansas City, Springfield & Memphis 

 Railway, has more commercial interest in the success of the Lake Borgne outlet 

 than any other western city, and on his way from New Orleans here was particu- 

 larly struck with facilities of the Memphis line as a medium of commercial com- 

 munication between Kansas City and the Mississippi River. 



We condense his views as given in the Kansas City Journal : 



He regards this road as the most important one for this section of the coun- 

 try ever built, for the reason that it, more than any other route of transportation, 

 penetrates the Southern States, striking the Atlantic Ocean at Brunsv;ick, Ga., 

 and crossing the Mississippi River below the ice gorge and shoal water, and 

 when the Mississippi may be opened with a thirty-foot channel that ships can 

 find, it will require two double track roads to do the business that will then seek 

 the Southern commercial outlets. 



A considerable portion of this road runs through the bottoms and over- 

 flowed lands of the Mississippi, and, not only the St. Francois bottoms are over- 

 flowed but the entire valley, from Cairo down to the Gulf, rendered comparatively 

 worthless. If authority can be obtained from, Congress during the short session 

 to make the Lake Borgne outlet at private expense, asking nothing of Congress 

 until the work is accomplished, it will reclaim that entire valley from overflow 

 the first year, and the value to the Kansas City and Memphis road alone would 

 be hundreds of millions of dollars. 



To show how the outlet plan would operate he referred to sonie engineer- 



