The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1883-03-03
THE FLOODS OF THE OHIO

From the meeting of it's swift conflu-
ent streams in the grimy gorge of Pitts
burgh to its lazy debOuchure into the
Mississippi at the swampy lowlands of
| Cairo the course of " the beautiful riv-
Ell" is 975 miles. Throughout all this
meandering length there are no cata-
racts, and only once-at Louisv;lle-are
there rapids, evaded in navigation by
straight canal cut through a straight
peninsula. The width of the river varies
from 1000 feet to 5000. The declivity of
the banks on either hand is for the most
part gentle, after the stream has cleared
its native hills, and the aspect OF the
banks, rich as they are with ''the pomp
of cultivated NATURE bearing for miles
and miles through the State to which the
river gives its name the trellised traces
of fruitful vineyards, is of a tame and
langud beauty. The fluctuations in the
depth of water are very great. From the
shallowneSS to which the stream is :
shrunken by the summer heats to the
turbid flood it rolls during the floods of
spring, or, as now, the February thaw,
the variation is commonly forty five feet,
is often fifty, and somestimes sixty, as in
the memorable and calamitous flood of
1882, to which it is necessary to revert
for comparison with the disaster of last
week, which will henceforth become
= ha e
natl the river has now attained depth
of sixty-tive and an inch, ten inches be-
yond the mark set tiity.one years ago;
and at Louisville even after the pent.up
waters had broken down the dam, and
ditfused themselves over the spaces de-
Tended by it, the depth was but eight in
ches less. The rise of the river is thus
along the whole course of the stream
near twenty feet beyond the mean year
ly rise.
Words and even more graphic pict-
ures cannot convey true sense of this
ruin, much less when the SubmergeEce
is that of the foundation OF great city,
The image which New Workers can form
in their minds of tide fifteen feet above
high water mark in the East and North
rivers can be but a faint image of the
wreck that has been wrought at Cincina-
ii. Among the most interesting features
of the river are the natural terraces,
sometimes scventy-Eyc feet above its
present surface, i;h, as biologists a.
gree, mark the level Of the bed over
which it flowed, and which is composed
of the alluvium it deposited, far, far back |
of the beginning of historic time; for the
mounds must have been built two thous-
and years ago conform to what are still
the banks and BID Of the stream. Upon
two Of these terraces, the lower sixty
feet above the river, the upper fifty feet
above the lower, rises the city of Cincin- |
natl, its dwellings and its shops upon the
terraces,its wharves, its railway stations,
and its streets of heavy traffic upon the !
alluvial level below, with the humber |
dwellings, of such citizens as constitute |
the shore population of a river town.
The contour Of the shore is slightly bow
ed outward, and at the lower end of the
curve Mill Creek flows in to join the
Ohio, while almost opposite the centre Of
the city, gu the Kentucky side, empties
the stream which devides Covington from
Newport. The spring freshets in this
stream often do great damage to tn
wharves opposite its mouth, an. TINS
stream. "a1d;np its..-~~~1I more to that |
which b,a .~-~'"dch," has contributed
;.~~.1lcrs 10 the submersion of lower
Cincinnati.
The floods Of the upper Ohio we're a
week earlier than at Cincinnati, where
no serious apprehensions We're felt unit.
Sunday, February II. At seven O'CLOCK