It has been proposed that great reservoirs be constructed in the mountain districts to hold back the waters that are wasted in their rush to the sea. If there could be made in the Bad Lands in northern Wyoming a reservoir that would hold all the waters accumulating there during the months of spring, that reservoir would "skim off" the top of the Mississippi river two thousand miles away and save the people there from the perils that threaten them whenever the water mounts toward the danger point.

It would require a vast artificial lake to hold these waters, but there are mountain ranges that could be utilized to form the barriers and the land taken from profitable grazing could be paid for with much less expense than the cost of one inundation of Mississippi bottom lands when a levee breaks.

Instead of one vast reservoir it will probably be found expedient to lay out a great number of works for retaining the western waters, as well as others in the eastern mountains and some in the beds of other tributary rivers whose sources are in the great basin between.

If these stores of water could be utilized for irrigation it is probable that the works would eventually pay for themselves in the increase in value of cultivated lands. The water at present is largely wasted because it rushes past the lands that need it before their distress of drouth comes, and its bulk is fairly spent when they need most the water that has passed. Adequate systems of reservoirs would also prevent largely the wearing away of banks and the changing of the course of the channel and even of the river itself which now sometimes tears away the foundations of cities, obliterates landmarks, and carries off bodily many well-tilled farms. Navigation could be much improved if the stages of high water could be moderated.

The Kansas farmer complained that the Missouri river is too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Control of surplus water near the sources would make this river — so moderate that commerce would move along its surface. Varying moods and shifting sands now prevent navigation on that great river almost completely.

The Chinese have a problem similar to ours. Their government esteems their board of public works as one of the highest in their country. This board has charge of the canals and embankments along the great rivers. But it is a Chinese board.

The Hoang Ho resembles our great water course in that it rises in mountains and flows for hundreds of miles through comparatively level country in its lower courses. It deposits mud along its way through the great plain so that the people are continually obliged to construct levees higher and higher until nature no longer will put up with such treatment and the great yellow river breaks its bonds and travels across the country to find a new outlet at the seacoast.

In 2500 years it has altered its general course nine times with terrible destruction of life and property. Its last great breach occurred in 1887, when it tore through the empire a new channel that caused its waters to reach the sea through the mouth of the Yangtsekiang five hundred miles away from its present mouth. More than a million lives were lost and the devastation of the country has never been approximately estimated. The gap torn in its embankment was two-thirds of a mile in width. Efforts to close it were ineffective except in low water, and when it was at last almost accomplished the celestials had a narrow but constantly deepening breach to mend, its depth during the last days of the work being so great that a torrent sixty feet deep fought with gigantic might against the endeavors of the men. At times the bed of this river has actually stood above the level of the surrounding country, its walls having risen with the rise of the bed due to the deposit of mud till it seemed as if the great river had risen to take a look over the surrounding plain to see where it could wreak the direst vengeance on those who prevented it from running unvexed to the sea.