Want of Water in America and Russia.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6383, 26 November 1890, Page 3

Want of Water in America and Russia.

( tt merican Correspondent Manchester Examiner.)

Although it may seem paradoxical to those who remember the disastrous inundations of the Mississippi, tbe Missouri, and other great American rivers last winter, the water supply of the United States, like that of the Bussian Umpire, is perceptibly decreasing, and this, too, at an alarming rate. In the Czer’s dominions the ordinary level of the great waterways has fallen to such an extent that many of the great streams suoh as the Dneiper, the Volga, and others, areunnavigable daring the present summer, while, on the mighty Elver Don, third-class passengers are only accepted on board tbe regular mail steamers on condition that they undertake to get out and shove behind on the shallow places. {Things are quite as bad, if not worse, an the American continent, and the cause is the same as in Bussia, namely, the wholesale destruction of the forests. Many of the piers and wharves on the shores of lake and riverside cities can no longer be approached by the shipping ns was the case ten years ago. The Des Moines river in lowa was once navigable to the mouth of the Bacoon Fork, the present site of the city of Des Moines, while now the water is hardly sufficient' to float a fisherman's row boat, and steamers

hare disappeared from its surface since 1878 ( Here in New York State the Hudson river is i becoming more shallow every year, and j tho upper portion thereof is almost entirely bare of water just now. The harbour |of Toronto has well nigh ceased to be of i any use, despite the fact that it has been J dredged out to the permanent rock bottom ; and all the millions spent during the pest few I years in attempting to deepen the harbour of i New York have failed to produce any satisfactory results. Meanwhile the destruction of timber by the great lumber companies proceeds unchecked, both in Canada and the United States. Thousands upon thousands of square miles of mountains, bills, and tablelands are being daily denuded of their moisture attracting forests, the lumber companies paying either a nominal sum, or, as in most cases, no money at all to the State Indeed, the cutting down of a tree seems to be regarded as a meritorious action— a clearing of land—and no thought appears to be taken of the future generations. Here, in New York and Connecticut, a feeble attempt has been made to protest against the evil by instituting a joublic holiday known as Arbor Doy, on I which every child belonging to the Slate- 1 schools is expected to plant a young tree. It is not, however, until Congress enacts some national law regulating tho devastation of lumber land that {any efficacious means can be adopted for dealing with the evil. And by that time remedies will be too late.