160 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
" The Atchafalaya overflows its banks almost or quite from its head to the 
Old River. The consequence of this overflow is shown in the report that the 
ba)'ou is lined with deserted sugar plantations, the houses and everything 
else being half covered with sediment. Any one will understand the effect of 
of this filling, viz.: to raise the banks and as the banks are raised it forces that 
much more water further down the channel or bed of the stream. I prophesy 
that this filling will go on until the banks are built up within a few inches of high 
water mark, and confine all the water to a channel or nearly uniform width from 
Red River to the Gulf. 
"The present width of the Atchafalaya is about i,ooo feet at the head and 
about 130 feet deep. For the entire Mississippi to go down that way would 
require a width of about 3,000 feet. The fill in the low lands will increase as 
the head water increases. This fill will continue until the channel is cut out into 
the Gulf when the high water mark along the new channel from Red River to the 
Gulf will be lowered, and the lands along the bank will be high above overflow. 
Then, indeed, will southern Louisiana become the garden spot of the world. 
With the entire river turned down the Atchafalaya the difference between high 
and low water at Red River would not exceed twenty feet, and the lands 
would be about fifteen feet above overflow, while along the old channel by New 
Orleans the water would be on a level with the Gulf, aff"ected only by the tide, 
and would be salt water. It would be a lake, 320 miles long, half a mile wide, 
and the water never above the present low water mark. 
"But what is to become of New Orleans? I answer that it must go. The 
shipping port should be at the head of steamship navigation. This, in my opinion, 
would be at the mouth of Red River, or above. In my opinion, the fate of New 
Orleans is sealed. 
'•' Now, Mr, Elliott admits my statement in regard to the filling up of the bed 
of the Mississippi below Red River. If it has filled so that a rise of three feet 
below high water at Red River makes the highest water known at New Orleans, 
how do you expect to wash out that channel again? It could only be done by 
closing Atchafalaya, which is now estimated to carry off one-fifth the water that 
previously went down the Mississippi, It would be necessary to raise the levees 
high enough to hold this extra water, or it would not scour out. This would 
require levees below Red River ten, if not fifteen, feet higher than they are now, 
and who proposes to build any such levees ? The proposition of the River Com- 
mission to divorce Red River and Atcha^aya from the Mississippi would be 
worse still, as the filling of the bed below Red River would be much more rapid 
even than now, and the levees would have to be raised higher eventually than if 
the attempt was made to close the Atchafalaya, 
