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National Geographic : 1908 Mar
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A DROWNED EMPIRE BY ROBERT H. CHAPMAN T HE swamp issue has recently appeared upon the legislative horizon as a new and rather at tractive proposition. Until very recently, federal reclamation of American mo rasses had not been considered seriously. The NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE last year published a general resume of the drainage question by MIr H. M. Wilson;* but since then the subject has taken shape with great rapidity, until now it looks as though we might have within the very near future a second reclamation act, this time for the purpose of removing the excess water from, rather than supplying it to, agricultural lands. In response to a Senate resolution, Sec retary Garfield has recently transmitted to Congress an instructive report on the work which the bureaus of his depart ment have already done in connection with swamp and drainage matters. While the country generally has supposed that drainage, so far as it is related to the work of the federal government, is a new question, and that any information that Congress might want with respect to swamp lands would be forthcoming only after much investigation, it seems these bureaus have not only been for years making detailed surveys and studies of swamp lands of the United States, but the Department of the Interior has in several cases entered into actual drainage con struction of large tracts in connection with irrigation projects. Over twenty years ago the Geolog ical Survey started a special investigation of the swamp areas of the country in the work of the late Professor Nathaniel S. Shaler, and his estimate of approximately 78,000,000 acres of wet lands east of the Iooth meridian stands today as accurate, * NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for May, 1907. t Senate Document No. 151. probably, as any figures yet produced. The fact, as stated in Mr Garfield's re port, that between seven and eight mil lion acres of swamps have been inciden tally surveyed by the Geological Survey in connection with the general topo graphic survey of the United States di rects attention to the great value of this class of work. One-third of the area of the country has already been covered topographically, and in this area where swamps occur these maps, taken in con nection with the hydrographic and geo logic investigations of the Survey, afford all the preliminary information required for determining the feasibility of drain age projects and for planning the broad features of construction. The reason that greater swamp areas have not been mapped is indicated by the fact that since the primary purpose of the topographic work of the Survey is to secure a base for the geologic map of the United States, the specific localities chosen for topographic surveys have naturally been those of greatest geolog ical and mineral importance and have not included any great swampy regions. Several special drainage surveys, how ever, are described, as, for instance, the work in the Sacramento Valley of Cali fornia, where a cooperative survey is being conducted by the state and the gov ernment, the Geological Survey doing the work. In this case special maps, designed for reclamation purposes, are being made of the million acres of rich tule swamps, about two-thirds of the work having been completed. In this valley is located the greatest combined drainage and irriga tion project in the United States, com prising a million acres of swamp and two million acres of reclaimable arid lands. A special drainage survey is also being made in the upper Yazoo delta, Missis sippi, under cooperative arrangement be tween the Geological Survey and the
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