276 FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
is about 640000. If this statement were true, more than the entire 
area would have been carried away since the voyage of Lewis and 
Clark, and if the process had been continuous since Columbus dis- 
covered America, the river to-day would be flowing in its original 
channel in the solid rock, 75 to 90 ft. below the present surface. As 
a matter of fact, there is more soil in the valley to-day than there 
was at the date of either of these events. Taking an average for a 
considerable period, none of the bottom land is lost. It has always 
been slowly rising through accretion. The bank caving is only a 
transfer from one point of the shore to another. For every dissolving 
bank there is a nascent bar. Where steamboats ran last year, willows 
may be growing this, and next year the farmer may be planting his 
corn. The havoc wrought concerns the individual owner, but not the 
valley bottom itself. The cruel losses attract attention; the un- 
obtrusive gains do not; but the account always balances itself. The 
harm done is first to the individual whose possessions are swept away, 
and second to the community through paralysis of development, de- 
preciation of values, and -the holding back of this natural garden 
spot from becoming what it ought to be. The evil is a very real 
one, and the writer has long endeavored, though without success, to 
secure provision in the River and Harbor Bill for its amelioration.* 
Great as the evil is, however, it is not at all in the nature of an 
actual loss of land to the valley. 
Tt must be clear from the foregoing that the bottom lands of the 
Missouri add nothing whatever to the total quantity of sediment 
that passes out of the mouth of the stream, for these bottoms have 
been increasing rather than diminishing in quantity. Likewise the 
Mississippi bottoms contribute nothing to the volume of sediment 
that is carried into the Gulf of Mexico. It all comes from the uplands, 
far and near, but principally from the more remote and hilly regions. 
This load is in the nature of through traffic. The local freight picked 
up from a caving bank is mostly discharged at the next station. 
It follows, therefore, that if the banks of these streams were revetted 
from the Gulf to Pittsburg, the Falls of St. Anthony and the mouth 
of the Yellowstone, the quantity of sediment passing into the Gulf 
would not be diminished a particle. Such revetment would never- 
* Transactions, Am. Soc. C. B., Vol. LIV, p. 336. 
