CHAP. XXX.] SNAG-BOATS. 171 



The large waves raised by the rapid movement of 

 several hundred steamers, causes the undermining 

 and waste of the banks to proceed at a more rapid 

 rate than formerly. The roots also of trees growing 

 at the edge of the stream, were very effective for 

 merly in holding the soil together, before so much 

 timber had been cleared away. Now the banks 

 offer less resistance to the wasting action of the 

 stream. 



The quantity of drift wood floated down the current 

 has not diminished sensibly within the last twenty 

 years, but nearly all of it is now intercepted in the 

 last forty miles above New Orleans, and split up 

 into logs by the proprietors to supply the furnaces 

 of steam-boats, which are thus freeing the river 

 of the heavy masses against which they used formerly 

 to bump in the night, or round which they were 

 forced to steer in the day. There has also been 

 a marked decrease, of late years, in the number of 

 snags. The trunks of uprooted trees, so called, get 

 fixed in the mud, having sunk with their heavier 

 end to the bottom, and remain slanting down the 

 stream, so as to pierce through the bows of vessels 

 sailing up. A government report just published, 

 shows that two snag-boats, each having a crew of 

 twenty men, one of them drawing four feet, and the 

 other two feet water, have extracted 700 snags in 

 four weeks out of the Missouri, and others have been 

 at work on the Mississippi. When it is remem 

 bered that some of the most dangerous of these snags 

 have been known to continue planted for twenty years 

 in the same spot (so slowly does wood decay under 



I 2 



