1885. ] Floods, their History and Relations. 1161 
ting off a part of the business of the latter and projecting a gen- 
eral stagnation. Capital, which otherwise would have gone 
South (which at that time was almost the sole region of invest- 
ment) to aid in its development, was locked up in safe-deposit 
vaults and Government bonds, causing a bank scare and many 
bank failures, The depression soon spread to England and 
other countries. A retrospective glance into American history 
shows that great Ohio floods and great financial crises have gone 
hand in hand. 
It is evident that having spent an entire century in trying, with 
no lasting effect, to repair damages done by floods, the country 
should turn its attention exclusively to their prevention. The 
methods of prevention are simple but expensive. Numerous 
reservoirs should be constructed among the springs in the hills, 
and little lakes in which to lock up the water. Great forests 
should be planted about the sources of the Ohio which will hold 
snow and ice unmelted for a long period, and allow it to escape 
slowly. In this way the sun will be made powerless to unloose 
the entire Ohio flood range at once, and the waters held sub- 
ject to national control. 
Congress has considered the question in its usual manner. It 
overlooked the facts presented above, and empowered the En- 
gineer department to make surveys at the headwaters of the Mis- 
sissippi for reservoirs. It might as well have gone to the head- 
waters of the Ganges, which have about as much to do with the 
destructive elements of these floods. It dropped $60,000 into 
this project and then dropped the subject. The future battle is 
the Ohio, not in Northern Minnesota or the moon. Congress 
will find it cheaper to purchase the land sources of the Ohio and 
its confluents, plant them with forests and wall them, than to 
plaster broken levees. 
Professor Swing, of Chicago, has suggested that the high 
mounds of the mound-builders were used as protection against 
cyclones, He was obviously mistaken. There are no high 
mounds in cyclonic areas. We find them exclusively in riparian 
connection, where they were evidently intended for use in time of 
oods. These mounds were nowhere used to dwell in. None 
are found with entrances or hollowed out. When opened they 
either contain skeletons, implements, relics, pottery or nothing at 
all. Those unoccupied show that the owner fled or was captured 
