58 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



advantages to society will be experienced there, which, it can be shown, ai*e 

 certain to follow the application of this system on the Ohio. 



It is not asserting more than the measurements presented in this paper will 

 justify, when it is maintained that it is entirely in the power of man to control all 

 the waters of the Mississippi and Missouri, and compel evei-y river to flow with 

 an even current, from its source in the Alleghany or Rocky Mountains, to its 

 home in the Ocean, forever free from the hurtful effects of floods and droughts. 



The writer can scarcely hope immediately to remove the suspicion and 

 distrust with which the first announcement of his plan was met by the public ; 

 but yet he believes that the period is past when prejudice or doubt can long resist 

 the force of demonstration. When, in a former age, it was proposed in Spain 

 to unite two rivers by a navigable canal, a commission of the Inquisition decided 

 against the project, on the broad ground that, if it had been the Will of God that 

 those rivers should be united, they would have been joined in their creation. 

 The decision was in conformity with the spirit of the age and the people, and 

 was doubtless dictated by honest views of piety and right. 



But times have changed, and men are learning to look upon this Earth and 

 all it contains as a gift from God to the beings of his creation, to be used, 

 explored, studied, and impi'oved. 



The waters are not the least of these bounteous gifts. But it does not follow, 

 because they are supplied in abundance, they were intended forever to be 

 wasted. It is more in unison with what is known of the original design to con- 

 clude that the apparent excess was intended for many useful purposes ; to be 

 collected for the benefit of the parched earth ; for the power that it affords ; for 

 the transportation of the products which it serves to increase and prepare ; and 

 not forever to burst, periodically, in a wave of destruction upon man and his 

 works. 



The -wiiter takes this occasion to express his obligation to his friend, I. Dickinson, civil engineer, 

 for much valuable aid in making the observations recorded in Table III. of this memoir. 



