404 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



care is used by pilots, in ascending are liable to * take a sheer,' and in such cases 

 ground on one side of the channel before the pilot can prevent it, but in no in- 

 stance of this kind has there failed to be an abundance of water in the channel, 

 and no interruption whatever has occurred by the grounding of such vessels, to 

 the passage of others in either direction. I tried with all the arguments that I 

 could use to have the Southwest Pass improved instead of the South Pass, be. 

 cause it discharges four times the volume of water, is twice as deep and twice as 

 wide, but the Senate reversed the action of the House in the matter and gave me 

 the little Pass to improve, the Commission of Engineers to whom the matter was 

 referred having declared that the little one was sufificiently large for the present 

 and future purposes of commerce. The Pass itself has from twenty-six to thirty 

 feet of water in it, and the law contemplated no improvement whatever in the 

 Pass for reasons just stated. It is ten miles long. The jetties are at the end of 

 the Pass, extending out into the sea two and a quarter miles, and the law does 

 not require me to maintain any definite sized channel through the Pass at all, 

 but expressly provides that I shall be paid $100,000 per annum for maintaining 

 a channel through the jetties, having a central depth of thirty feet and a channel 

 twenty-six feet deep with a bottom width in no place less than 200 feet. This 

 latter width has been maintained during the last year and a half without interrup- 

 tion, except during four days, when it was diminished to no feet in width by the 

 rising of a ' mud lump.' For these four days a proportionate deduction from my 

 compensation was made by the United States, although the contract depth of 

 thirty feet existed at the time through the channel, and the no feet of twenty- 

 six-foot water was of ample width to have passed the City of Rome with safety. 

 The channel is measured every week or tw^o by my own engineers, and is care- 

 fully surveyed and measured by the United States engineers whenever they think 

 it can be found deficient. Their surveys are made without regard to any fixed 

 time, and parts of the channel suspected of deficiency are measured by them two 

 or three times a week. In addition to this absolute testimony to the falsity of 

 these reports, intelligent people recognize the fact that within two years New Or- 

 leans has risen from a fourth class exporting port to a second-class one, and no 

 one can cite the instance of a single vessel that has been detained a single minute 

 by grounding in the channel, whether in the Pass or the Jetties. 



" I hnve said and done all I can to secure the improvement of the river. Its 

 commerce has now a chaice of all the Atlantic markets of the world through the 

 Jetties and Straits of Florida, and I intend to devote my utmost energies to secur- 

 ing for it a choice of the markets of the Pacific by giving the Mississippi River an 

 outlet across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec." 



Captain Eads will remain in St. Louis a short time when he will leave for 

 New Orleans to take the " City of Merida " for Mexico. He will cross the Isth- 

 mus to examine the lines surveyed by his engineer during the past ten months, 

 and will visit Vera Cruz for the purpose of submitting plans for harbor improve- 

 ments at that port. 



