The evening tribune. (Pawtucket, R.I.) 189?-190?, 1897-03-04
in THE FLOODS PATH
THE OPTIMISM THAT LOOKS FOR BET
TER TIMES NEXT SEASON.

Destroying Streams Stay and sufrcr Loss
Year After Year with Hope springing
Eternal In Their Breasts.
The reports from the district through
which the Potomac and the Shenandoah
rivers flow show that the floods have
again caused the loss of much property
and that the destruction was greater
than at any other time since 1886. For
the highest, there was much apprehen-
sion as far down the Potomac river as
Harper's Ferry, where the usually quiet
stream resemblcd a huge, roaring tor
rent, which threatened to carry away
the massive bridge which spans the
river, so violently did it break against
its granite abutments The water had
been drawn from the canal which runs
parallel with the river, but the freshet
had filed the bed to overfiowing, and
the strip Of land which separated it
from the nadly rushing river had be-
come SO narrow in some places that
river and canal seemed doomed to be-
come merged at any moment, to the de-
struction Of the artificial banks. The
lowlands farther up ON the line Of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad, as far as
Martinsburg, were flooded, and the
farm products, for which the owners
had hoped to realize handsome reve-
nue., were destroyed, stock was drowned,
and buildings collapsed. To many of
the people who went to the inundated
district to make observations and who
looked upon the appalling spectacle the
fact that people would live in such
district, where equally severe inunda-
tions might be expected any year, was
incomprehensible. They asked, Why
should man risk his life and his prop
erty in a place which offers nothing
more than other places where there are
no floods? And the farmer says that it
costs too much to pull up stakes and to
go elsewhere, and even if it did not the
place was good enough for his family
"away back " and it is good enough for
him. The fact is that people usually be-
lieve that the food Of that year will be
the last to do any damage.
This is not true of the rural districts
alone, but il fits the residents of large
cities whose geographical situations
make foods almost an annual occur
renee. The best examples of that kind
are Cincinnati and Albany Cincinnati
has had some terrible floods, and the
records on the wharf show that the Ohio
has measured 81 feet in depth between
the city and Covington. Several of the
streets running parallel with the river
have often been changed into miniature
rivers, and the stores and warehouses
on the river front have had water in
| the second stories. But the people re-
manned in the stores after the floods had
subsided, and when the torrents came
| down from Pittsburg and Wheeling the
next time and converted the broad levee
into lagoon, swept by coffee colored
| water, the same merchants were in the
same stores that had been flooded when
| the Ohio was "up' the last time.
Albany can tell the same story. When
the time for breaking up comes, when
the ice in front of the city begins to as
sumo the telltale curve form, and when
even the small boy cannot be tempted
| to cross on the honeycombed surface,
| the people who have goods on the
| ground floors in houses along the river
front move them one story higher up in
the house and watch for the ice to move
out. Sometimes it does so with little
ado, and the frozen mass goes sailing
down the stream in large foes, leaving
no trace Of destruction behind, and the
old river, which had been hidden from
view for weeks, reappears, possibly a
| trifle higher than its normal condition,
but imperceptibly so to the unschooled
| observer And then the man who had
prepared for high water puts his goods
back where they were and tells his
neighbors that the days Of high water
are over.
The next year the ice is likely to
break up without warning after short
thaw and to become choked on the bar
below on its way down stream. The
water backs up in the city, and when
! it is rising fast, when Broadway has
become river and the roof of the Peo-
pies line sheds can barely be seen peep
ing over the ice covered water, the cry
may come, ''The Troy water is COM
ing!" and the water will continue to
rise, to the delight only of the boys who
row about the streets and take people
from their bedroom windows to shore. "
Stocks are destroyed, household goods
are ruined, people contract illness be-
cause of the exposure, and still, when
the waters have receded, when the great
cakes of ice which were left high and
dry OF the streets by the falling waters
have melted away and the spring sun
has absorbed the last vestiges of the
foods work, the people clean up their
stores and their houses and wait for the
next high water. And some who have
been compelled to listen for years to the
tales of the old timers about the high
water Of 1867, "when they had boats in
| Franklin street and when the river froze
tight again when the flood was at its