OF FRESHETS AND OVERFLOWS. 231 
ENGINEERING. 
OF FRESHETS AND OVERFLOWS. 
REV. ALBERT E. WELLS. 
We Americans are an inventive people and stand ready to grapple with any- 
problem that comes in the way of our developing the vast country that is our inher- 
itance. Permit then, in view of the annual devastation wrought by water, a sug- 
gestion in regard to the proper method and place of meeting and guiding the water- 
fall or catch of the Mississippi basin. Is there not bad contrivance, to say the least 
of it, in trying to handle its enormous bulk along the lines of river border in Louis- 
iana ? If I wished to direct the water faUing upon the roof of a barn I would 
catch it as near the roof as possible, and not wait to have it mingled with the 
rain faUing on all the farm. The proper place, therefore, to deal with the over- 
flows that do so much damage from Omaha, St. Paul, and Pittsburg to New Or- 
leans, is on the upper watersheds. A tub that will not hold water is a failure for 
a tub. Competent engineering could, I believe, make every town in this vast 
area hold water at least long enough to deliver it in proper shape to the water- 
courses that lie next below. And every town would be the better for doing so. 
Consider for a moment the present system of natural open drains. They 
waste land, by the space they occupy, and by washing of their banks. If we start 
at the head of the draw, and follow down, we shall meet, first, the break in the sod 
or soil where the force of the water begins to cut. Second, a deepening ravine 
or gully where, the top soil being cut through, we find the clay washing out. 
Third, the rock formation is reached, and by the time we are three miles down 
the stream we have a cross section of some forty-five square feet and waste ground 
each side of it, sixty feet wide on an average. 
Most of the time the bed of this watercourse is dry. After an ordinary 
shower it is bank-full, after a heavy rain it overflows its banks, and its turbid 
waters tear away its banks like flumes, and below there is for the larger stream a 
choked-up channel that puts it in a rage, and the washing out is on a larger scale 
until the river is reached where we have our yearly unmanageable torrent. And 
nine-mile creek has a bed large enough for a navigable river in which one is 
not likely three weeks after a heavy rain to find running water enough for his 
horse to drink, and drift beyond its banks sufficient to indicate the awful power 
of its flood. An examination of its bed shows piles of loose stone, sand-banks 
and mud-banks, stranded drifts of logs, trees, stumps, and straw, and corn-stalks. 
A calculation of the amount of water that has probably passed through the chan- 
nel will serve to excite our wonder. Say the basin drained is a township of 
