﻿A Brief Sketch of the Moods in the Ohio Eiver. 



115 



and in other floods accounting for the Indian legend, "From hill to hill," 

 occurring at a time when scarcely a tree in the Ohio Valley had been felled 

 by the white man? 



The great theory of forestry accounting for floods and drouths does not 

 seem to hold good on our great Western prairies. Illinois, Iowa, Northern 

 Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas, as well as the great Red River Valley of 

 the North and the great Northwest prairies, seem to be particularly fertile, 

 and as free from drouth as regions covered with the native forests in all 

 their glory. Enough has been said already, however, to convince the most 

 skeptical, and to keep the forest humbugs and schemers for political offices, 

 under this new idea, busy preparing even plausible explanations in order to 

 have the facts fit their theory. 



The last fact to which attention is to be directed is the greater frequency 

 of floods in recent years. Dividing the fifty-two years of record into two 

 periods — the first twenty-six years yielded two floods, the last twenty-six 

 thirteen floods, while for the last five years we have had one each year. 

 The cultivation of the soil, with increasing outlay in tile-draining, certainly 

 facilitates the discharge of water which the great surface-soil of the earth, 

 as a sponge, has before held back, and the ever-increasing facility for out- 

 lets may. in a measure, account for this. Meteorological observation has 

 not been of long enough duration to enable us to say whether cold and 

 warm waves are more frequent now than formerly, and whether our climate 

 is gradually changing or not. Yet the frequency of the floods in recent 

 years certainly suggests such a possibility, and we may look forward with 

 pleasure to the further accumulation of those records to determine that 

 point. 



A brief summary of the meteorological conditions and stages of the 

 water during the flood of 1884. extracted from .the Report to the Relief 

 Committee of the Chamber of Commerce by R. B. Stevenson, Esq., is here 

 appended : 



"The meterological causes of the flood began on the 14th day of Decem- 

 ber, 1883, when the winter's first fall of snow occurred in the Ohio Valley, 1 

 less than 1 inch in depth at Cincinnati, where the stage of the Ohio 

 River was 10 feet 7 inches on that day, a minimum to which it did not 

 again decline for a period of six months or more. To the snow, on the date 

 named, was added rainfall to the depth of sixteen-hundreths of an inch. 

 Light snows fell on the 15th, 16th, 18th, and 19th of December, followed 

 by a heavier snow on the 20th, and twelve hours of snow on the 22d, 

 the fall of the day last indicated measuring 6j inches in depth. The 

 *now then on the ground was partly removed and partly more closely 



