540 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



The damage caused by an overflow consists chiefly in the loss of time and 

 the injury to the crop prospects, for it is, of course, impossible to plant until the 

 land has been drained of the water. Cattle are often drowned in large numbers, 

 but buildings are rarely injured, for the water of the overflow is generally current 

 less. It is rarely that a break occurs directly in front of buildings. Breaks are 

 often occasioned by the borings of crawfish, which honey-comb the levee and let 

 the water through. Another danger is an exposed position to a long sweep of 

 the wind down the river for several miles, dashing the water against the levee 

 with great fury. The first land to suffer from a break is that farthest away from 

 the river, down toward which the water flows. If there is no outlet down the 

 valley for the water it will gradually back up toward the river, filling all the space 

 with a great pond. The land close to the levee, being the highest, is the last to 

 suffer. 



The greatest flood ever known on the Mississippi was that of 1844, which 

 swept away all levees, overflowed the entire country, filled up the swamps, re- 

 mained at high-water mark for months, until the middle of July, and did not 

 finally retire until nearly the middle of August. The flood was owing to the un- 

 scientific construction of the levees, and would be hardly possible since. Will- 

 iam L. Murtree, Sr., gives a graphic description of the flood in Scribner's for 

 July : " The shallowest water, for indefinite miles in any direction, was two feet 

 deep, the nearest land 'the hills of the Arkansaw,' thirty miles away. The 

 mules were quartered on the upper floor of the gin-house; the cattle had all been 

 drowned lorjg ago ; planter, negro and overseer were confined to their respective 

 domiciles; the grist-mill was under water, and there was no means of preparing 

 corn for culinary purposes except a wooden hominy mortar. That year nineteen 

 plantations out of twenty failed to produce a single pound of cotton or a single 

 bushel of corn, and, when the flood was over, and the swamp |S^oahs came out of 

 their respective arks, they were, to say the least, malcontent.", 



There had not been such a great rise since 1828, but that did comparatively 

 little damage, for the country was then hardly inhabited. Since that time there 

 has been no such universal damage, for the levees have not succumbed all to- 

 gether at any subsequent period of high water. But the injury, although scat- 

 tered here and there is very great, for the country is now more thickly settled 

 and productive. Millions of dollars worth of damage is annually done by floods 

 in various parts of the Mississippi Valley. In 1871, in the Ouachita Valley alone, 

 one of the tributary streams in Louisiana, the damage by a flood was $5,000,000. 

 The flood of 1874 caused a loss of $13,000,000. 



It is now proposed that the Government take the improvements of the Mis-» 

 sissippi in charge and carry out comprehensive measures designed to prevent 

 further floods. It is urged that this is a national matter, as the reclamation of 

 such a vast area of the richest land would add immensely to the prosperity of the 

 entire country. This area is as large as the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, 

 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey combined. Less 

 than eight per cent of this area is now under cultivation. It is estimated that, if 



