Evening star., 1927-04-30
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS.

at New Madrid Mo-. caused by tha
oyerweight of the Mississippi River
delta's deposit Of new burdens Of
silt and sand brought down on Its
flood waterS-one of the 20 greatest
earthquakes in history.
The literalists who have clung to tha
idea that Noah's one flood actually
covered the whole round globe nave
pointed to the finding of sea shells
on the tops of high mountain peaks,
buried in the strata or in sed1-
mentary rocks. But within the last
rs years science has developed
'isostasy," the knowledge of the
elasticity of the crust of the earth.
which shows that when one section
becomes overloaded, it sinks and
pushes upward a corresponding area
creates new mountain ranges in
that way. So the shells on tops OF
peaks do nothing but prove that
those peaks were indeed once the bot
tom of the sea, pushed up into noun
tains. as the elastic earth reshaped
itself.
A few years after Cortez had con-
quered the Aztecs. and while he ruled
their country from the capital, now
called Mexico City, a great flood COW
cred the city. The metropolis is in
a valley thousands of feet above
sea leVeD surrounded by a rim OF
mountains. The flood waters stayed
five years, nearly destroying the cap
ital, and orders came from Spain to
rebuild on higher ground, but before)
the removal there came an earth
quake, opening the ground and
draining off the flood. To guard
against a repetition of that catas-
drainage tunnel through the noun
tain rim. The tunnel repeatedly caved
in, until a total of 100000 wOrkmen
were killed, but at last it was opened
as a ditch. and to this day Nochis-
tonga Ditch. through the mountain
rim of Mexico Valley, remains one
of the greatest engineering feats in
the world-greater in achievement
than the Panama Canal. in the
amount of excavation. for it was all
hand work. with the crudest of tools.
X x x
SO the engineers who have wrestled
with the problems of the Mississippi
floods are not without predecessors
in engineering experiments. The Eads
project of limiting the river by build
ing high levees, upon the theory that
that would force the water into CEN
trail channel which would so Increase
the current that it would dredge out
deeper channel and clear away its
own delta, has not proved the sue
cess expected, according to certain
persons united 10 oppose the levee
system.
Chief of these organizations is the
National Reclamation Association of
New Orleans and Washington, which
cites the experience of India as to the
disadvantage of levees on the Ganges.
1t claims that India has abandoned
Ievees. and will build reservoirs to
hold back surplus food waters. Our !
Army engineers adhere to their trust
IN levees, but the association argues.
in a new book now on the press:
There has been for years belief
in the minds of many that II from
the beginning the levees had been
built only around the cities, towns
and villages and plantation homes and
buildings had been raised above the
floods so that the gentle and shallow
overflow from the river could spread
over the fields, reviving and fertiliz-
ing them, as has been the system in
the valley of the Nile since before
history, il would have been more
beneficial system for the Missis-
sippi River overflow lands than the
system adopted by the Mississippi
River Commission in 1879. 1t is now
too late to return to the Nile system.
but it is not too late to put an end
to the desperately dangerous system
of constantly raising the levees higher
and higher, with an ultimate height in
contemplation that is unattainable."
There is in prospect a strong fight
in Congress between the two schools
of thought-the one advocating
confined river" with more and high
er levees, and the other a "wide-Open
policy" with towns and plantations
surrounded with levee walls, but with
freedom for surplus flood waters to-
overflow swamps and fields and tof
irrigate the open country.
There IS still another plan urged
which involves systems of reservoirs
at the headwaters of all tributaries
to the Father of Waters" That
plan would probably be united with
the wide-Open river plan.
tCopyright. 1927. BY Paul v. c0lnns.I :