The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 30

In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the damming up of deep valleys by ice-slips or by the gradual advance of glaciers, and the acc.u.mulation of great ma.s.ses of water above the obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick, and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining 500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and thus thawing it before it acc.u.mulates in sufficient ma.s.s to form a new barrier and threaten serious danger. [Footnote: In 1845 a similar lake was formed by the extension of the Vernagt glacier. When the ice barrier gave way, 3,000,000 cubic yards of water were discharged in an hour.--Sonklar, Die Oetzthaler Gebirgsgruppe, section 167.] In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water, which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of the earth, have been prevented by human agency. River Embankments. The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing the escape of river-waters from their natural channels, and the overflow of fields and towns by their spread, is that of raised embankments along their course. [Footnote: Riparian embankments are a real, if not a conscious, imitation of a natural process. The waters of rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination deposit, in their inundations, the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the channel. The immediate borders of such rivers consequently become higher than the grounds lying further from the stream, and const.i.tute, of themselves, a sort of natural dike of small elevation. In the "intervales" or "bottoms" of the great North American rivers the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt (see Figari Bey, Studi Scientifici sull' Egitto, i, p. 87), though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where the alluvial banks form natural glacis, descending as you recede from the river, and in some places, as below Cape Girardeau, at the rate of seven feet in the first mile. Humphreys and Abbott, Report, pp. 96, 97.

In fact, rivers, like mountain torrents, often run for a long distance on the summit of a ridge built up by their own deposits. The delta of the Mississippi is a regular cone, or rather mountain, of dejection, extending far out into the Gulf of Mexico, along the crest of which the river flows, sending off here and there, as it approaches the sea, a system of lateral streams resembling the fan-shaped discharge of a torrent.] The necessity of such embankments usually arises from the gradual elevation of the bed of running streams in consequence of the deposit of the earth and gravel they are charged with in high water; and, as we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their forests.

When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently, the water of its floods, which would otherwise spread over a wide surface, is confined within narrow limits, the velocity of the current and its transporting power are augmented, and its burden of sand and gravel is deposited at some lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is checked by a dam or other artificial obstruction, by a diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterwards checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where its overflow had been before prevented by embankment.

[Footnote: In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the annual inundations is increased. Some towns on the banks of the Po, and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring-dikes for their protection.

Lombardini lays down the following general statement of the effects of river embankments:

"The immediate effect of embanking a river is generally an increase in the height of its floods, but, at the same time, a depression of its bed, by reason of the increased force, and consequently excavating action, of the current.

"It is true that coa.r.s.er material may hence be carried further, and at the same time deposit itself on a reduced slope.

"The embankment of the upper branches of a river increases the volume, and therefore the height of the floods in the lower course, in consequence of the more rapid discharge of its affluents into it.

"When, in consequence of the flow of a river channel through an alluvial soil not yet REGULATED, or, in other words, which has not acquired its normal inclination, the course of the river has not become established, it is natural that its bed should rise more rapidly after its embankment. ...

"The embankment of the lower course of a river, near its discharge into the sea, causes the elevation of the bed of the next reach above, both because the swelling of the current, in consequence of its lateral confinement, occasions eddies, and of course deposits, and because the prolongation of the course of the stream, or the advance of its delta into the sea, is accelerated."--Dei congiamenti cia soggiacque l'idraulica condizione del Po, etc., pp. 41, 42.

Del Noce states that in the levellings for the proposed Leopolda railway, he found that the bed of the Sieue had been permanently elevated two yards between 1708 and 1844, and that of the Fosso di San Gaudenzio more than a yard and a half between 1752 and 1845. Those, indeed, are not rivers of the rank of the Po; but neither are they what are technically called torrents or mountain streams, whose flow is only an occasional effect of heavy rains or melting snow.--Trattato delle Macchie e Foreste di Tuscana, Firenze, 1857, p. 29.] The bank must now be raised in proportion, and these processes would be repeated and repeated indefinitely, had not nature provided a remedy in floods, which sweep out recent deposits, burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the adjacent country with final desolation, or divert the current into a new channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar struggle between man and the waters. [Footnote: The Noang-ho has repeatedly burst its dikes and changed the channel of its lower course, sometimes delivering its waters into the sea to the north, sometimes to the south of the peninsula of Chan-tung, thus varying its point of discharge by a distance of 220 miles.--Elisee Reclus, La Terre, t. i, p.

477.

Sec interesting notices of the lower course of the Noang-ho in Nature, Nov. 25, 1869.

The frequent changes of channel and mouth in the deltas of great rivers are by no means always an effect of diking. The mere acc.u.mulation of deposits in the beds of rivers which transport much sediment compels them continually to seek new outlets, and it is only by great effort that art can keep their points of discharge pproximately constant. The common delta of the Ganges and the Brahmapootra is in a state of incessant change, and the latter river is said to have s.h.i.+fted its main channel 200 miles to the west since 1785, the revolution having been princ.i.p.ally accomplished between 1810 and 1830.]

But here, as in so many other fields where nature is brought into conflict with man, she first resists his attempts at interference with her operations, then, finding him the stronger, quietly submits to his rule, and ends by contributing her aid to strengthen the walls and shackles by which he essays to confine her. If, by a.s.siduous repair of his dikes, he, for a considerable time, restrains the floods of a river within new bounds, nature, by a series of ingenious compensations, brings the fluctuating bed of the stream to a substantially constant level, and when his ramparts have been, by his toil, raised to a certain height and widened to a certain thickness, she, by her laws of gravitation and cohesion, consolidates their material until it becomes almost as hard, as indissoluble, and as impervious as the rock.

But, though man may press the forces of nature into his service, there is a limit to the extent of his dominion over them, and unless future generations shall discover new modes of controlling those forces, or new remedies against their action, he must at last succ.u.mb in the struggle.

When the marine estuaries and other basins of reception shall be filled up with the sedimentary debris of the mountains, or when the lower course of the rivers shall be raised or prolonged by their own deposits until they have, no longer, such a descent that gravitation and the momentum of the current can overcome the frictional resistance of the bed and banks, the water will, in spite of all obstacles, diffuse itself laterally and for a time raise the level of the champaign land upon its borders, and at last convert it into mora.s.ses. It is for this reason that Lombardini advises that a considerable s.p.a.ce along the lower course of rivers be left undiked, and the water allowed to spread itself over its banks and gradually raise them by its deposits. [Footnote: This method has been adopted on the lower course of the Lamone, and a considerable extent of low ground adjacent to that river has been raised by spontaneous deposit to a sufficient height to admit of profitable cultivation.] This would, indeed, be a palliative, but only a palliative. For the present, however, we have nothing better, and here, as often in political economy, we must content ourselves with "apres nous le deluge," allowing posterity to suffer the penalty of our improvidence and our ignorance, or to devise means for itself to ward off the consequences of them.

The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they flow; [Footnote: I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys, for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of the surface originate in higher geological causes, such as the fissures and other irregularities of surface which could not fail to accompany upheaval, and hence the valley makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed, from the submarine abyss where it was fas.h.i.+oned, the first shower of rain that falls upon it, after it rises to the air, will discharge its waters along the lowest lines of the surface, and cut those lines deeper, and so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined to move its channel southwards, at certain points, in consequence of the mechanical force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the only element of its influence on the course of the princ.i.p.al stream. The deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of change.] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished, they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the beds they had previously scooped out. [Footnote: The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river, whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will r.e.t.a.r.d its current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics. The elements--such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, ma.s.s of water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other improvements always going on in new countries--are all extremely difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the American States, very numerous water-mills have been erected within a few years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the country which has not several mill-dams upon it. When a dam is raised--a process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders frequently necessary--or when a new dam is built, it often happens that the meadows above are flowed, or that the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the stream extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent law-suits.

From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more conflicting in these than in any other cla.s.s of cases, and the obstinacy with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.] The raising of the channels is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many cases they in fact are, mere mora.s.ses.

All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current, or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of marshes where, if left to herself, she might have acc.u.mulated inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains above the reach of ordinary floods. [Footnote: The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the other hand, the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.--See Botter, Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferraress. Annali di Agricoltura, etc., Fasc. v., 1863.]

Dikes, which, as we have seen, are the means most frequently employed to prevent damage by inundation, are generally parallel to each other and separated by a distance not very much greater than the natural width of the bed. [Footnote: In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and much inclined to s.h.i.+ft their beds, like the Po, the embankments often leave a very wide s.p.a.ce between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes three or four miles apart.] If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the evils of inundation except those resulting from filtration; but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and in maintenance, and, as has been already shown, the filling up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and gravel, often involves the necessity of incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the banks. [Footnote: It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its level may be regarded as nearly constant. Observation has established a similar constancy in the bed of the Rhone and of many other important rivers, while, on the other hand, the beds of the Adige and the Brenta, streams of a more torrential character, are raised considerably above the level of the adjacent fields.

The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, prima facie, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion. There are abundant grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankements gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend to excavate or to raise their beds according to the inclination, and to the character of the material they transport. No general law on this point can be laid down in relation to the middle and lower courses of rivers.

The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river-bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex, to be subjected to formulae, and they can scarcely even be enumerated.

The following observation, however, though apparently too unconditionally stated, is too important to be omitted.

Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine, light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the western United States have deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes--the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio--flow in deep cuts, for the same reason.--Baumgarten, p. 132.

In regard to the level of the bed of the Po, there is another weighty consideration which does not seem to have received the attention it deserves. refer to the secular depression of the western coast of the Adriatic, which is computed at the rate of fifteen or twenty centimetres in a century, and which of course increases the inclination of the bed, and the velocity and transporting power of the current of the Po, UNLESS we a.s.sume that the whole course of the river, from the sea to its sources, shares in the depression. Of this a.s.sumption there is no proof, and the probability is to the contrary. For the evidence, though not conclusive, perhaps, tends to show an elevation of the Tuscan coast, and even of the Ligurian sh.o.r.e at points lying farther west than the sources of the Po. The level of certain parts of the bed of the river referred to by Lombardini as constant, is not their elevation as compared with points nearer the sea, but relatively to the adjacent plains, and there is every reason to believe that the depression of the Adriatic coast, whether, as is conceivable, occasioned by the mere weight of the fluviatile deposits or by more general geological causes, has increased the slope of the bed of the river between the points in question and the sea. In this instance, then, the relative permanency of the river level at certain points may be, not the ordinary case of a natural equilibrium, but the negative effect of an increased velocity of current which prevents deposits where they would otherwise have happened.] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages. They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation; they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a wider surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest inundation. [Footnote: To secure the city of Sacramento, in California, from the inundations to which it is subject, a dike or levee was built upon the bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water OUT, now kept it IN.

According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the river at high water has been elevated considerably above the level of the adjacent fields by diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and pa.s.senger boats, and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence.--Travels in Italy and Spain, Nov. 7, 1789.

In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181 square miles, of the plain to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet, in the lower parts. The inundation of May, 1872, a giant breach occurred in the dike near Ferrara, and 170,000 acres of cultivated land were overflowed, and a population of 30,000 souls driven from their homes. In the flood of October in the same year, in consequence of a breach of the dike at Revere, 250,000 acres of cultivated soil were overflowed, and 60,000 persons were made homeless. The dikes were seriously injured at more than forty points. See page 279, ante. In the flood of 1856, the Loire made seventy-three breaches in its dikes, and thus, instead of a comparatively gradual rise and gentle expansion of its waters, it created seventy-three impetuous torrents, which inflicted infinitely greater mischief than a simply natural overflow would have done. The dikes or levees of the Mississippi, being of more recent construction than those of the Po, are not yet well consolidated and fortified, and for this reason creva.s.ses which occasion destructive inundations are of very frequent occurrence.]

For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes is fundamentally wrong, and it has been argued that if the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta had been left unconfined, as the Nile formerly was, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to the laws of nature, the sediment they have carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks, it is supposed, would have risen as fast as their beds, the coast-line would not have been extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man, too, spared a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po, it has been said, would resemble the Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its banks.

But it has been shown by Humphreys and Abbot that the system of longitudinal dikes is the only one susceptible of advantageous application to the Mississippi, and if we knew the primitive geography and hydrography of the basin of the Po as well as wo do those of the valley of the great American river, we should very probably find that the condemnation of the plan pursued by the ancient inhabitants of Lombardy is a too hasty generalization, and that the case of the Nile is an exception, not an example of the normal regime and condition of a great river. [Footnote: Embankments have been employed on the lower course of the Po for at least two thousand years, and for some centuries they have been connected in a continuous chain from the sea to the vicinity of Cremona. From early ages the Italian hydrographers have stood in the front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous, exhaustive, and complete.

"The science of rivers after the barbarous ages," says Mengotti, "may be said to have been born and perfected in Italy." The eminent Italian engineer Lombardini published in 1870, under the t.i.tle of Guida allo studio dell' idrologia fluviale e dell' Idraulica practica, which serves both as a summary of the recent progress of that science and as an index to the literature of the subject. The professional student, therefore, as well as the geographer, will have very frequent occasion to consult Italian authorities, and in the very valuable Report of Humphreys and Abbot on the Mississippi, America has lately made a contribution to our potamological knowledge, which, in scientific interest and practical utility, does not fall short of the ablest European productions in the same branch of inquiry.]

But in any event, these theoretical objections are counsels apres coup.

The dikes of the Po and probably of some of its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy physical or political annals of the provinces they water. The civilization of the valley has accommodated itself to these arrangements, and the interests which might be sacrificed by a change of system are too vast to be hazarded by what, in the present state of our knowledge, can be only considered as a doubtful experiment. [Footnote: Dupenchel advised a resort to the "heroic remedy"

of sacrificing, or converting into cellars, the lower storeys of houses in cities exposed to river inundation, filling up the streets, and admitting the water of floods freely over the adjacent country, and thus allowing it to raise the level of the soil to that of the highest inundations.--Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricole, Paris, 1868, p. 241.]

The embankments of the Po, though they are of vast extent and have employed centuries in their construction, are inferior in magnitude to the dikes or levees of the Mississippi, which are the work of scarcely a hundred years, and of a comparatively spa.r.s.e population. On the right or western bank of the river, the levee extends, with only occasional interruptions from high bluffs and the mouths of rivers, for a distance of more than eleven hundred miles. The left bank is, in general, higher than the right, and upon that side a continuous embankment is not needed; but the total length of the dikes of the Mississippi, including those of the lower course of its tributaries and of its bayous or natural emissaries, is not less than 2,500 miles. They const.i.tute, therefore, not only one of the greatest material achievements of the American people, but one of the most remarkable systems of physical improvement which has been anywhere accomplished in modern times.

Those who condemn the system of longitudinal embankments have often advised that, in cases where that system cannot be abandoned without involving too great a sacrifice of existing interests, the elevation of the dikes should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and that they should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been erected, or where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves over a greater surface, and by thus r.e.t.a.r.ding the flow of the river currents, will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood. [Footnote: The system described in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the ancient Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water.]

Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminis.h.i.+ng the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less liable. [Footnote: Moyens de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils ravagent, et d'empecher les grandes Inondations.] The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent to judge in such matters. It is, however, by no means capable of universal application, though it would often doubtless prove highly useful in connection with the measures now employed in South-eastern France. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their northern provinces for a similar purpose.

By this means, he supposes, the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quant.i.ty of transported pebbles and gravel--which, by increasing the mechanical force of the water, greatly aggravate the damage by floods--much diminished. When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he proposes to place along one or both banks, according to circ.u.mstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven yards from each other. The s.p.a.ce between the two lines, or between a line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles, should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining downwards, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel--where they would be rolled along until ground down to sand or silt--and the transverse obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony confirmatory of their soundness. [Footnote: The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on Waters and Fountains, p.

173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he, "in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges, where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters that flow from them."

Lombardini attaches great importance to the planting of rows of trees transversely to the current on grounds subject to overflow.--Esame degli Studi sul Tevere, Section 53, and Appendice, Sections 33, 34.]

Removal of Obstructions.

The removal of obstructions in the beds of rivers dredging the bottom or blasting rocks, the was.h.i.+ng out of deposits and locally increasing the depth of water by narrowing the channel by moans of spurs or other constructions projecting from the banks, and, finally, the cutting off of bends and thus shortening the course of the stream, diminis.h.i.+ng the resistance of its sh.o.r.es and bottom and giving the bed a more rapid declivity, have all been employed not only to facilitate navigation, but as auxiliaries to more effectual modes of preventing inundations. But a bar removed from one point is almost sure to re-form at the same or another, spurs occasion injurious eddies and unforeseen diversions of the current, [Footnote: The introduction of a new system of spurs with parabolic curves has been attended with giant advantage in France.--Annales du Genie Civil, Mai, 1863.] and the cutting off of bends, though occasionally effected by nature herself, and sometimes advantageous in torrential streams whose banks are secured by solid walls of stone or other artificial constructions, seldom establishes a permanent channel, and besides, the increased rapidity of the flow through the new cut often injuriously affects the regime of the river for a considerable distance below. [Footnote: This practice has sometimes been resorted to on the Mississippi with advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of 1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800 feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water, diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the sh.o.r.es, and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much geographical importance.

The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide s.p.a.ce between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its course. These short cuts are called salti, or leaps, and sometimes abridge the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 metres by 5,000, or, in other words, reduced the length of the river by five kilometres, or about three miles, and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mozzanone effected a still greater reduction.]

Combination of Methods.

Upon the whole, it is obvious that no one of the methods heretofore practised or proposed for averting the evils resulting from river inundations is capable of universal application. Each of them is specially suited to a special case. But the hydrography of almost every considerable river and its tributaries will be found to embrace most special cases, most known forms of superficial fluid circulation. For rivers, in general, begin in the mountains, traverse the plains, and end in the sea; they are torrents at their sources, swelling streams in their middle course, placid currents, flowing molli flumine, at their termination. Hence in the different parts of their course the different methods of controlling and utilizing them may successively find application, and there is every reason to believe that by a judicious application of all, every great river may, in a considerable degree, be deprived of its powers of evil and rendered subservient to the use, the convenience, and the dominion of man. [Footnote: On the remedies against inundation, see the valuable paper of Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni avvenute in questi ultimi tempi in Francia. Milano, 1858.

There can be no doubt that in the case of rivers which receive their supply in a large measure from mountain streams, the methods described in a former chapter as recently employed in South-eastern France to arrest the formation and lessen the force of torrents, would prove equally useful as a preventive remedy against inundations. They would both r.e.t.a.r.d the delivery of surface-water and diminish the discharge of sediment into rivers, thus operating at once against the two most efficient causes of destructive floods. See Chapter III., pp. 316 at seqq.]

Dikes of the Nile.

"History tells us," says Mengotti, "that the Nile became terrible and destructive to ancient Egypt, in consequence of being confined within elevated dikes, from the borders of Nubia to the sea. It being impossible for these barriers to resist the pressure of its waters at such a height, its floods burst its ramparts, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and deluged the plains, which lay far below the level of its current. . . . In one of its formidable inundations the Nile overwhelmed and drowned a large part of the population. The Egyptians then perceived that they were struggling against nature in vain, and they resolved to remove the dikes, and permit the river to expand itself laterally and raise by its deposits the surface of the fields which border its channel." [Footnote: Idraulica Fisica e Sperimentale. 2d edizione, vol. i., pp. 131, 133.]

The original texts of the pa.s.sages cited by Mengotti, from Latin translations of Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch and from Pliny the Elder, do not by any means confirm this statement, though the most important of them, that from Diodorus Siculus, is, perhaps, not irreconcilable with it. Not one of them speaks of the removal of the dikes, and I understand them all as relating to the mixed system of embankments, reservoirs, and ca.n.a.ls which have been employed in Egypt through the whole period concerning which we have clear information. I suppose that the disastrous inundations referred to by the authors in question were simply extraordinary floods of the same character as those which have been frequent at later periods of Egyptian history, and I find nothing in support of the proposition that continuous embankments along the banks of the Nile ever existed until such were constructed by Mehemet Ali. [Footnote: The gradual elevation of the bed of the Nile from sedimentary deposit, from the prolongation of the Delta and consequent reduction of the inclination of the river-bed, or, as has been supposed by some, though without probability, from a secular rise of the coast, rendered necessary some change in the hydraulic arrangements of Egypt.

Mehemet Ali was advised to adopt a system of longitudinal levees, and he embanked the river from Jebel Silsileh to the sea with dikes six or seven feet high and twenty feet thick. Similar embankments were made around the Delta. These dikes are provided with transverse embankments, with sluices for admitting and ca.n.a.ls for distributing the water, and they serve rather to retain the water and control its flow than to exclude it. Clot Bey, Apercu sur l'Egypte, ii., 437.]

The object of the dikes of the Po, and, with few exceptions, of those of other European rivers, has always been to confine the waters of floods and the solid material transported by them within as narrow a channel as possible, and entirely to prevent them from flowing over the adjacent plains. The object of the Egyptian dikes and ca.n.a.ls is the reverse, namely, to diffuse the swelling waters and their sediment over as wide a surface as possible, to store them up until the soil they cover has them thoroughly saturated and enriched, and then to conduct them over other grounds requiring a longer or a second submersion, and, in general, to suffer none of the precious fluid to escape except by evaporation and infiltration.

Lake Moeris, whether wholly an artificial excavation, or a natural basin converted by embankments into a reservoir, was designed chiefly for the same purpose as the barrage built by Mougel Bey across the two great arms which enclose the Delta, namely, as a magazine to furnish a perennial supply of water to the thirsty soil. But these artificial arrangements alone did not suffice. Ca.n.a.ls were dug to receive the water at lower stages of the river and conduct it far into the interior, and as all this was still not enough, hundreds of thousands of wells were sunk to bring up from the subsoil, and spread over the surface, the water which, by means of infiltration from the river-bed, pervades the inferior strata of the whole valley. [Footnote: It is said that in the Delta alone 50,000 wells are employed for irrigation.]

If a system of lofty continuous dikes, like those of the Po, had really been adopted in Egypt, in the early dynasties when the power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government of that country, and persevered in through later ages, and the waters of the annual inundation had thus been permanently prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank mora.s.ses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough land. Fortunately, the sapientia AEgyptiorum, the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught them better things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have been, from the h.o.a.riest antiquity, the greatest material blessing that nature ever bestowed upon a people. [Footnote: Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quant.i.ty or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of the tenth degree of north lat.i.tude. Nor does it appear that much sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile, that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is brought down by the Takazze.]

Deposits of the Nile.