The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-02-13

and fifteen thousand, half the entire popu-
lation, have been driven from their homes
by the rising river. Many of these refu-
gees have been quartered at hotels, board
ing.houses and with friends, and churches
and school-houses have been thrown open
and the people fed and housed there. The
water and gas works have given out, and
the city is in darkness. The loss is esti-
mated at 100000. The flood is the
most extensive ever known in that region.
The muddy, raging torrent has swept
through the streets of the city, and steam
boats have piled where stand the elegant
residences of citizens. The flood was the
result of sixty consecutive hours of rain.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has had SINH.
lar experience. The police patrolled the
flooded district in skiffs for the protection
of the stores and dwellings which had been
abandoned. Intense darkness prevailed,
except where the electric light shed its
glare. Travel on nearly all the railways
is suspended, and the city is full of
weather-bound strangers. Public halls in
both Allegheny City and Pittsburgh are
filled with homeless sufferers. The loss
in that locality is estimated at SO $1,000.
At Cincinnati, Ohio, the submerged ter
ritory is reported to be as great as last
year. Newport, on the Kentucky shore,
presented the appearance of great lake,
with the houses peering out here and
there, like small islands. At Louisville,
Kentucky, and at the smaller towns
and cities in the Ohio and up the trib-
utary valleys, great destruction has been
wrought, accompanied by loss of life.
These frequent foundations have become a
most serious drawback to the prosperity
of the country affected by them. Natures
great preventive of such disasters, the
forests, has been ruthlessly cut away, and
it is very likely that in this valley, de-
prived of the protecting reservoirs of ex.
cessive rainfalls on the mountain ridges,
will be repeated the old story which has
long been coming from the valleys through
which the great streams of Europe and
Asia flow, of ruinous floods sweeping
away focks and harvests, villages and vii
layers, the penalty for that ruthless spirit
which in bygone ages stripped the great
watersheds of their sheltering trees. These
things are worthy of the very serious
attention and inquiry of the forestry com
mission created by our legislature at its
last session. The lumberman's axe is
making rapid and serious inroads upon
the woodlands, in which are'the sources Of
the streams of Vermont. Her brooks
and rivers to-day supply the equivalent Of
unmeasured steam power. The forests
that shelter their fountains also protect
the valleys from devastating freshets, and
it is due to future generations that ma
lures benefcent provisions for industry
and defense against danger be not squan
dered for little transitory gain. Tht
forests on the rocky ridges and mountain
declivities-fit only for growing trees
like Goldsmith's bold yeomaury, theil
country's pride, when once destroyed car
never be supplied y; and the physical ant
material consequences in the one case ar
no less serious than the moral and politi
cal loss in the other. Let Vermont lool
speedily to the trees which the woodman'
axe is meuacing.