The Southern reveille. (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1876-1890, 1890-05-09

~AlU
The idea Of Eads was 10 confne
the river in narrow banks and thus
force II to scour out a deeper chan
mel, and this sane theory is held by
tho advocates Of the levee system,
in addition 10 its fuDcti0n in pro-
tecting the country from inundaHon.
But ii does neither. The leyces
are higher now than in 1886, and
they were higher then than in 1882.
They arc heightened every year,
and al each successive food the wa
ter reaches to the top Of them, and
they give way and the country is
flooded just the same as ever, and
If you 60 back q hundred years you
will find from the records that the
floods were no more disastrous then
than they are now, and covered no
greater surface.
The peculiarity Of the river Is its
carrying capacity Of sediment, in
which il is equalled BY only two or
three rivers in the world The ef-
feet Of this is that however high you
build a levee the bed Of the river
will be silted up, and then when q
break comes it is always liable to
cut out a new channel at the point
where il leaves the river, and BY its
velocity IL may cut a channel deep
or than the bed below and SO ire
vOcably turn its course.
That il does not cut its channel
deeper any old pilot will tell you.
There are many places in the river
where there have been large ,uncov-
cred rocks, which are now covered
by several feet Of sand a. the bed
Of the river has risen, and the same
is true Of countless old hulls Of
wrecked boats which are complete
ly buried, whereas, if the theory
that the river cut deeper by confn-
ing its channel were true, they would
necessarily be bare or carried away.
I have been studying Wilson'S
work Of China, and also the obser-
vations of Williams, Martin, Ney
Elias and the able Hue, and / am
struck with the similarity between
the river Hwmg Ho and the Missis-
sippi: and also BY the unanimity Of
opinion Of these writer's on the fu-
tility Of the levee system as applied
to that river, their opinion being the
more valuable because they had
nothing at stake.
The Hwang Ho has a water-course
Of 200 miles, and for hundreds, per
haps thousands Of years, the Chin
ese have been cndeavOring IN vain
to control il BY means ofdykes. The
results ~ their lab r. have been
that ii has changed its bed six times
i'm the Chinese historic period, and
now empties into the sea at a point
which, measured by the coast line.
is GOO miles from its former mouth,
so completely has il changed is
course.
All kinds of levees have been
tried with the same result. In the
middle ages they were built close TO
its banks, now they are placed a
mile or more back, with sometimes
protection levees between them and
the river, but the same result al
ways ensues. The emperor Kien
Lung. who flourishod in the eigh-
teenth century, built a levce near
Kai-Fung-Fu which was fifty feet
high, fifty 10 sixty feet wide on top,
a slope OF two base to one, and which
cost, even with Chinese labor, $50
600 per mile; and yet this enormous
embankment was broken by the
food Of 1853. the river cut across
the plain to the Tatsing- Ho and fol-
lowed that river to the guilt of Pc
chilli. The course seemed to suit
it, for all efforts TO make II resume
its former course have been in vain
and the embankmcnt stands there
now, the greater part Of il miles A.
way from the river, q monument 70
the folly of the levee system. And
10 show the value Of the opinions Of
the men have quoted il Is only ne
cessary to say that the able Hue
predicted that this would happen
years before that date, and his pre-
dictiou was doubtless laughed at by
the men Of his day.
Ney Elias, a scientific English
man, writing Of the disaster Ia the
Journal offhe North Chiaa Branch
offhe Royal Asiatic Societu, states
that the "river had so diminished
the capacity of its bed by deposit
ing the alluvium with which its wa.
ters were charged that the embank-
ments were unable 20 hold tho tre-
mendpus pressure, " and the Missis-
sippi carries the same alluvium and
deposits il on its bOttom IN just the
same manner.
In the flood Of 1853 thousands of
lives were lost, and then the outlet
theory obtained a footh0ld, and for
q large part Of its length tho Hwane-
Ho il practically made two r'Ters
IA high water, ,empgying ipto The sea
at two mouths. The consequences
IA THAI there has not been an over
Now 0f either since that great dis
aelef
VaAorous Taft, Of Upton, Mass,
la probably the largest man in that
atate who haS been prominent ~
politics. Ho Is considerably over
y feot high and weighs over 5VV
pounds.