take which is made in the application of the jettee system by engineers comes from a want of observance of the laws which regulate the carrying capacity of the stream. They are frequently designed converging. The result is that we invariably find shoal water where the jettees are wide apart, and deep water at the mouth of the jettee. Q. Where would you propose to begin the upper portion of the jettees? A. That would be a matter which I should want to give some more mature thought to before commencing. I would not want to place them so narrow as to produce a depth of 60 feet, which I should get if I put them only a thousand feet apart, because 60 feet of water would involve a great difficulty in maintaining the jettees. Q. It would be some place higher up the river than the commencement of the bar, would it not? A. It would be at least five miles above the bar. Q. Then you will continue those jettees, as I understand you, directly to the bar? A. Yes, sir; to the crest of the bar. Q. And is your theory, then, that the increased velocity of the current which you will get by confining and concentrating the volume of water will cut the bar out? A. I will explain that the velocity which will be found between those jettee heads or outlets will be no greater than it is to-day after they are completed. During their construction the current will be accelerated to some extent. That acceleration is equivalent to loading up, taking out the material from the bottom, the only place it can get at, and it will gradually increase its cross-section there until the present current is maintained. Q. Making the increased velocity perform the functions of a dredge on the bar? A. For the time being, and after it has been deepened to its normal depth, then the velocity will only be that which is necessary to carry the load which the stream has, out into the sea, because if it were any greater than that it would continue to cut. I want to make that plain to you, that if the velocity were more rapid than it is to-day it would continue to cut as long as it were maintained more rapidly. Q. By the construction of these jettees do you propose to confine the entire volume of the river in that particular pass within those jettees? A. Yes, sir; unquestionably. Q. There will be no escaping, if I can so express it, above the jettees? A. There will be no reason for that whatever, because the jettees will create no rise above. Q. Then, as I understand you, you will take the points of width of the river naturally that you want to maintain for the width of your river when the jettees are completed? A. Yes, sir; and that width would probably be 1,500 or 1,800 feet, so that instead of having a little channel for ships to pass in and out, it would give you a magnificent entrance into one of the finest harbors in the world. Q. Your proposition is to the effect that when 20 feet is obtained you shall be paid $2,000.000. I understand from the Chief of Engineers, General Humphreys, that he can obtain 20 feet of water by doubling the present dredged force, now made use of by the United States, which would cost $500,000 per annum. A. The possibility of dredging the channel by the present system, at the mouth of the Mississippi, is utterly out of the question. If you increase the cross-section of the river at the bar, you require an increased volume of water to maintain the same current. You have no increased volume of water, but you increase the section by the dredge, which diminishes the current and causes a constant deposit right in the place; fills it up as fast as you can dredge it out. The present system of dredging is carried on, not by removing the earth, but simply by stirring it up from the bottom with the fallacious idea that the current of the river will carry it out to the sea. The current being already loaded with all it can carry, will take up no more, and the material settles back. Q. How do you account for the fact that it does by its present excavating process increase the depth? A. The present method of dredging is by stirring up the bottom with the propeller-screw of the dredge-boat, having an iron apron inclined behind the propeller at such angle that the muddy water is thrown up near the surface over this apron, for the purpose of getting it up as high as pos sible in the stream. The effect of the propeller is simply to stir up the bottom, soften the mud, and make it more easy for a ship to plow her way through it, and this increased depth results from that operation. The fact that it is of no permanent character at all is shown by its continually filling up immediately after the dredge-boat leaves it. Again, by producing a depth of 20 feet of water by the dredge-boat, if it were possible, it would simply be a narrow channel through which it would be very difficult for ships to steer with accuracy in the waste of water that is down there, without buoys or channel-marks, and they would be constantly liable to go aground. My proposition does not simply stop with the obtaining of 20 feet of water, but it provides for a payment to me and my associates, when I shall have obtained 20 feet, and given that evidence to the Government of the plan being successful. Q. Then if you obtain 20 feet for three months, and were paid the $2,000,000, that would be an acquittal on your part of your part of the contract, would it not? A. Yes, sir; that might be so construed. It would not be considered so by me nor by my associates, because when 20 feet is obtained it will be at an expenditure of certainly three-fifths of the total cost of producing 28 feet. To get 20 feet would be an absolute proof of our ability to earn the remaining $8,000,000. Q. Do you distinguish technically by your terms between the heads of your jettees and the termination that is on the crown of the bar? What do you call that? A. That is called the head of the jettee. Q. What would this be farther up the river? A. There is no particular name to that part. It is the upper end of the jettee. Q. As to the construction of the head of the jettees, which will be on the crown of the bar, will they be exposed to the action of the sea in the case of a violent storm? A. Yes, sir. Q. What will be their nature; a permanent mason-work? Q. Sufficiently strong to meet that difficulty! A. In answer to your question, I will state that the bill will provide for an annual payment of $500,000 for the purpose of strengthening and improving and protecting these jettees; and that $500,000 is based solely on the fact that we maintain intact 23 feet of water. The ex penditure necessary to keep up these jettees I do not think would amount to $500,000. Q. Per annum, do you mean? A. Per annum. It might amount to a hundred thousand; it might amount to two hundred thousand; it might possibly amount to $500,000 for the first two or three years; but it would be manifestly to the interests of the company to make them so substantial that they would save this large income as a profit resulting from their enterprise. Q. Am I to understand you, then, that your proposition first embraces a payment of $2,000,000 when 20 feet is reached, and three millions more when 28 is reached? A. No, sir. The depth is increased proportionately from 20 feet up to 28 feet. The amount is paid for proportional. Q. But the additional amount of three million is up to 28 feet? Q. Then, having attained $5,000,000, you expect that the Government shall pay $500,000 per annum for ten years to maintain the max-. imum depth? A. Yes, sir. Q. So that we are to give $10,000,000 for this process, and it is guaranteed to us for ten years. What do we do at the end of that time? A. Then, having established the fact that this is the proper method of improving the Mississippi River, I think the Government ought to be able to take care of it itself. Q. At what expense? A. It would be difficult for me to predict with any positive certainty what the expense would be, but it ought to be very little manifestly. Q. A hundred thousand dollars a year? A. I am inclined to think that it would not cost five cents for fifty years afterward. I doubt whether this company would have to pay $500 for improvements or strengthening those jettees five years after they were executed. Q. What would be the probable expense of maintaining this channel after the contract with you has been entirely completed? For instance, we see now an expenditure of $10,000,000 and we have a guarantee in ten years. Now you express your opinion that that will be all that the Government will be required to pay. A. I say I do not believe they will have to pay five dollars in the next fifty years. Q. Then there is this difference between the engineer's plan of the Fort Saint Philip Canal and yours. You feel quite satisfied that if your theory is carried out at an expense of $10,000,000 we will have 28 feet of water? A. Yes, sir; with a magnificent width. Q. Yes, and they feel satisfied that with an expenditure of the same amount, perhaps, we will have 28 feet of water. Now is not one a plan which has been illustrated and proved by the experience of many other canals, and is not yours a theory which has scarcely been tried with any advantage yet? A. No, sir. I do not know of a river or stream liable to make a great deposit where a canal has been used successfully, but I do know where a similar stream to the Mississippi has been deepened in this manner. Q. The Danube? A. The Danube. I do know that they are constructing similar par allel jettees for the improvement of other outlets to the sea in Holland -the Maas, from Rotterdam to the sea. Q. How does the character of the deposits held in suspense by the Mississippi River at its mouth compare with the character of the deposits held by the Danube ? A. I think there is more alluvial in this than there is by the Danube. I have only been on the upper portion of the Danube. I have traveled four hundred miles on it, and that portion very much resembled the Mississippi River, particularly as you get near Vienna. Q. What in brief have been the results obtained, the extent of the jettees, expense, and the increased amount of water at the mouth of the Danube ? A. The water has been increased at the mouth of the Danube from 9 feet to 20 feet, and 20 feet has been maintained during the past three years. My information is recent on the subject, within the last three months, and I am sure that up to that time there was no indication whatever of shoaling up or lessening of the depth which had been maintained there for three years. I will state further that the Danube has some features which would make it more unfavorable for this kind of an improvement than the Mississippi. The Gulf deepens at a distance of two miles from the bar to 950 feet. Sir Charles Hartly told me that they went out several miles from the Sulineh mouth of the Danube, with very little perceptible increase of depth. I understood him to say that some two or three miles out there was only a depth of 30 or 35 feet of water. In comparing the expense of maintaining this and the expense of maintaining the canal, it will be found that the canal and its locks will need constant dredging, and the lock-gates and other parts of the canal will need quite as constant repairs as these jettees possibly can. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. What was the cost of the Danube improvement ? A. I am not able to state positively, but I think it was a million of dollars-something over a million. The length of the jettees was less than a mile. I believe the longest jettee was 4,600 or 4,800 feet. I will state that the plans of Sir Charles Hartly, as he assured me himself, were submitted to a board of international engineers, convened in Paris, representing the various governments concerned in that improvement, and they were condemned by that commission of engineers. Q. Then your preference for this plan over the canal, is that the canal has not been tried in a parallel instance, as I understand you to say? A. In a parallel instance. Q. But that the expense of maintaining the canal, you think, will be quite as expensive as this? A. I think it will be more so; much more so, because the expense of the canal is inevitable and without end. The locks must be dredged. Ansted, Prof. David T., Charlestown, West Virginia, proposed water-line from Charlestown to 452-461 Baker, Benjamin P., vice-president New York Cheap Transportation Company Beef, none packed in England Barges: Capacity of, on Canadian canals..... Cost and capacity of, on Mississippi River.. Cost of coal-barges and size..... Size best adapted to transportation purposes Buffalo: Terminal facilities at.. A great distributing point............................ 792 812 821-829 830 835 836 97 344-348 109-113 179 181 619 511 693 204, 208 204 Amount of coal shipped from........... 4 211-220 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, low rates of freight and superior terminal facilities.. Byrne, B. W., Charlestown, West Virginia, land on New River, West Virginia.. 493, 494 Brannin, A. O., chairman sub-committee board of trade, Louisville, Kentucky, commerce of Lou- Bush, Hon. John T., lake and river transportation.......... Advantages of, as a terminal point............. Railroad connections.... Brown, Gov. Joseph E., railroads of Georgia.. Butt, Col. Caleb W., Mobile board of trade.. Burwell, Hon. W. M., Mississippi River tonnage, &c.... Bonded warehouses in New Orleans Bussey, Gen. Cyrus, New Orleans cotton exchange...... 790 793-803 803-807 853-858 899, 900, 924-939 916-922 Beauregard, Gen. G. T., Fort Saint Philip Canal as a means of defense.......... 944-947 949-952 |