Arkansas true Democrat., 1858-11-03
An Interesting Review of an Interesting 2
 Book

We extract from one of our exchanges re- view of new French work on inundations.
 We call the attention of those interested 10 the theory of double levees noticed below.
 The article will be found interesting to river planters
 |" Ever since the terrible inunlations ofJulv, 1856, which the practical good sense of Louis Napoleon turned so well to the advantage of his popularity with the French people, miscel- laneous suggestions and we'll arranged memoirs on the subject have appeared from time tp time in public prints or been read before the learned societies. The latest and best of these is by Monsieur Dausse. He calls it The So- lution of the Problem of the lnundatons,' and a short dissection of it will not be bad practice for American engineers. Our own future in this respect is threatening. The ravages of the Le- high and the Juniata in 1887, of the Hudson at Troy, the Ohio at Cincinnati, and the Missssip- pi at Cairo and New Orleans in subseouent years, paralleled in local distress, if not in ag- gregate amount of damage, by thousand les ser floods, we must expect to see repeated over and over again, and with steadily increasing power of destruction as the country grows barer and barer every year under the insensate ax- Every year some portion of the Union has been and will be again the theatre of needless deso- lation. The wealth squandered in luxury, in gambling, in foolish engineering, to say nothing of Seminole wars and an idle navy, would make the Ohio not only safe conduit, but a navigabe river, with steady water level-- That legislative joke the new Portage railroad over the Alleghanies, side by side with the Pennsylvania railroad, dismantled, its iron ta ken up as soou as laid down, and its new cross- ties stacked for sale across it's costly embank- ments and at the mouth of its tunnel would have paid easily for one or two of Ellet's grand est reservoirs. But we are no wiser than the rest of the nations, and insist iealousy upon our fair share of the physical judgments launched In the shape of pestilence and storm upon hu. man ignorance and reckessness. The time will come, however, when the same necessity which has compelled the people of the Pyrenees to begin to restore the old pine wood garments to | the plundered mountan-sides will bear too hard upon us to be postponed for the private advan- ta9e of postmasters, custom house clerks and members of Congress.
 M. Dausse treats his subject under two heads The least possible disturbance of the sources ol rivers and the lowest possible leveling of their beds. These find equivalent expressions in the counterclearing or rewooding of the hill country and in the construction of lakes or reservoirs Every traveller in the Alps and Pyrenees has noticed the chains of lakes which make so grea, a beauty in the scene; and how the lower ones are clear and the upper ones muddy, and how above the uppermost are flat plains which have once been lakes filled up with glacial mud A range of reserypirs upon the heads of our west ern rivers woald cut off the very genesis O their sandbanks, as well as of their occasional ol periodical freshets. Add to these the bibulou. covering of forest underbrush and prairie sod ready to soak ur every drop of rain that falls and turn it gently downward through the rocks and jealously retaining all the mold and disn tegrated surface of the earth iu the embrace. of their myriad roots, and we have a picture O eternal rivers with banks and beds eternally a rest. ya#al2 'fsa
 M. Dausse says that natural lakes are rare il France. They are so in most countries and il all hilly countries. But its just in hilly coun