“Not far beyond this locality the flood passed into the province of Anhui, where it spread very widely. The actual loss of life could not be computed accurately, but the lowest intelligent estimate placed it at one million five hundred thousand, and one authority placed it at seven million.”
The inundated provinces were under water four months. Two million survivors were left destitute. The mind quails at the appalling magnitude of such a catastrophe.
Such is the warning given by the Yellow River. It is urged that if the Mississippi is heavily leveed, the same results will follow. The Po is another instance. The bed of the stream has been raised by dykes until it is higher in many places than the tops of the houses, and such disasters as have befallen the dwellers near the Yellow River of China, have only been avoided because of the fact that the Po is a comparatively diminutive stream. It is said that the same state of affairs exists on a smaller scale still on the Tiber. But the opponents of the outlet theory ascribe the China floods to ignorant engineering—a charge that can not be easily made to stick, when it is remembered that the Chinese have some of the most remarkable specimens of engineering skill in existence.
In support of the outlet theory, a number of experienced river captains and pilots assert that the bed of the river has been slowly rising during the past thirty years; that levees are needed at points where none were years ago, while at the same time there is less water in the channel at those points than formerly. At the time of this writing Captain Condon is urging that an outlet be made through Lake Borgne, from a point ten miles below New Orleans. His company is to assume all costs, only asking that if successful, they shall be paid $500,000 for every foot of reduction of the high water level. He asserts that one-fourth of the flood waters can be readily drained off by this means. This Lake Borgne idea, commendable as it appears, has been agitated, more or less, for forty years, without being tried. A noted government engineer, Charles Ellet, urged it at the time of the flood of 1853, without avail.
Whatever be the result of present deliberations, we must hope that no effort will be spared to thoroughly test the merits of any system agreed upon. But the long deliberations and the slow movements of the governmental committees are vexatious to those most vitally concerned. A prominent Louisianian says: “If the government and the people had raised $500,000, placed a larger force, and held that Morganza levee, it would have cost less than the mere relief expenditures, to say nothing of the millions of total loss of the flood.” And Harper’s Weekly affirms that “in one respect the casual observer is moved to sarcastic reflections. When a flood does come, like the present one, or even one of much less dimensions, the work of the commission is of necessity suspended, and at first sight it seems extremely ridiculous to see engineers waiting for the water to subside before they can place confines many feet below the present surface, which confines are intended, in part at least, for the purpose of preventing similar overflows in the future.”
THE HOLLAND DYKES.