Part 7 (1/2)

Another curious thing is how the river mills help themselves to new h for its work, it has a way of drawing on its banks for et scarce, so that it can rind together--it proceeds to dig its own bed deeper, since this bed is no longer protected by a rock pavement in the bottom This, of course, deepens its channel, and so adds to the steepness of the slope of its banks Then, owing to this increase in the incline of the slope,business”

picks up again

THE GOVERNOR IN THE RIVER MILL

But there ; the rocks may come in faster than the river mill can take care of them Then the river bottom beco down at all, to speak of, and the river remains at the same level until the rains and the wind and other workers have worn the banks down and lessened the incline Then, with fewer and fewer fresh stones tuets a chance to catch up with its work

It is this ground-up rock stuff of thestreams all the way down, that has helped form the rich bottoes, the water of the Mississippi and its tributaries have been at work, and by the tiet down into southern Louisiana you come to the delta where this rich soil has been piled up for more than 1,000 feet above the bottom of the old Mediterranean Sea, that used to reach north and south across the country

You remember the lines, don't you:

”Little drops of water, little grains of sand Make the hty ocean and the pleasant land”

Well, this is how they do it; all this that I've been telling you

[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Scientific American_

THOUSANDS OF FARMS POURED INTO THE GULF

The Father of Waters is a good far in others The Mississippi's floods, like those of Father Nile, enrich the bottom lands, but the river is apt to break all bounds and do a lot of dae Moreover, every year it carries away thousands of acres of good soil and pours it into the Gulf How to teach the Mississippi to work in harness, as the Nile has been taught to do in recent years, is one of the probleenuity and skill to solve A good deal of the yearly waste could be prevented, however, by the various ood farmers]

III HOW THE RIVERS ACT AS BANKERS FOR THE FARMERS AND THE SEA

We speak of river banks and the kind of banks that handle those promissory notes our arithmetics tell about as if they were entirely different; and so they are, I suppose, if one just looks at the surface of the thing But if we dig into the subject a little we shall see that they are much alike in the fact that one of the principal businesses of both kinds of banks is to make loans at interest Men's banks loan money, to be sure, while the river banks loan pebbles, but if it were not for these pebble loans there would be a ht less money for the banks to loan, or the farht to be a good lesson to certain far checks on their banks--the far anything back

[Illustration: WHERE THE RIVERS ACT AS BANKERS

Here is a fine piece of botto accounts” for the far pebbles for currency, as explained in this chapter]

HOW THE RIVERS PLACE PEBBLES ON DEPOSIT

The riverspebbles in the broad botto along to other lands, from time to time, some of the fine rich soil these pebbles help ular banking style, ”checking out” the pebbles fro other pebbles in their places Take the banks and bottom-lands of the Mississippi River, for example It has been estimated that it requires about 40,000 years for a pebble to make the journey to the Gulf from the mountains of a tributary streament

The first part of the journey in the rades, and so is coets farther from the mountains, the slope of its bed becomes less and less, the onward movement is slower and slower, and more of the pebbles stop to rest In tiular channel and spread over the wide flood-plain of the river Then, as the flood goes down, they are left buried there under a coating of mud So buried, they decay and enrich the soil Then the next flood that co sweeps the pebbles with it--checks them out of the bank--but at the same time carries away not only some of the soil richness which these pebbles helped to etation these pebbles thus helped to grow, such as the roots and blades of wheat and corn and stubble and chaff left in the fields That's the interest on the loan Then, when the flood subsides, the pebbles are again deposited farther along in the river's course, but ht fresh deposits of pebbles from up-stream, and these are left in place of those taken away

RIVER BANKING AND HUMAN CIVILIZATION

This banking business has been going on for ages and is a very important part of the history of civilization Here and there along the sides of the older and larger river valleys are found the remains of ancient plains These plains are now, many of them, quite a distance above the level of the stream This means that they were at one time the botto deeper and deeper into its bed, grew narrower, and so abandoned its old flood-plains As savage , he found these botto for his crooked-sticks and stone hoes--the only kinds of ploughs and hoes there were in those days With such crude far on any other kind of soil

When the river floods ca, all these crooked-stick farmers had to do was to keep out of the way until the floods went down, and there were their fields all fertilized for theo on for thousands of years working the sa their heads as to whether they needed any li; for they didn't The river floods attended to all that

[Illustration: FATHER NILE AND THE MAKING OF EGYPT

”Egypt,” said Herodotus, ”is the gift of the Nile”; and it is true so far as her fertile lands are concerned The ancients attributed the annual floods to the God of the Nile, as shown in that statue of Father Nile in the Vatican Below is a threshi+ng scene in Egypt painted by Geroyptian noble, sho they ploughed and sowed in the Pyrae]