Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
An' then ye look at the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad, they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July, an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt an' what d' ye see?
Cities, once prosperous, were shown abandoned because the mountains near by had become deforested. Man could not live there because food could not grow without soil, and all the soil had been washed away from the slopes. The streams, once navigable, were choked up with the silt that had washed down.
The latter is covered two inches deep with more stone or gravel and over all go lengths of roofing paper cut slightly wider than the trench so that, when in place, the paper arches and fits tightly to the sides. The purpose of the stone or gravel is to facilitate water seepage from tile to ground while the roofing paper cover prevents silt from reducing the seepage.
In this case, however, the deposits consist of gravel, sand, and silt which the rivers have gradually washed out from the Rocky Mountains. As the rivers have changed their courses from one bed to another, layer after layer has been laid down to form a vast plain like a gently sloping beach hundreds of miles wide. In most places the streams are no longer building this up.
The line of silt that marked the water's normal depth now stood exposed and dry, full two feet above its running, and the pulse of the current had weakened as though it were ebbing fast.
The central stream permitted easy irrigation on each side by tapping the waterfall higher up; and the wash of the silt of centuries ensured fertility to men, whose plowing must have been accomplished by the shoulder blade of a deer used as a hoe. Modern pueblo Indians claim to be descendants of these prehistoric dwarf races.
A stone in the First Church graveyard is all the visible reminder there remains of Cap'n Amazon Silt, who for one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road. The life-savers brought Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the wreck, the last survivor of the Curlew's crew. He was in rather bad shape, for his night's experience on the wreck had been serious indeed.
Ten years had developed in him that graceful languor which at four-and-twenty was only beginning to get mastery over the energies of a well-built frame. 'This stuff here, he said, pointing to an open box full of mud, 'is silt from down the Thames. It's positively loaded with diatomaceoe, you remember our talking about them when you were last here? I am working at the fabric of the valves.
I reckoned he was nothing but a bag o' wind, with all his yarns of bloody murder an' the like. But he is a Silt; no gettin' around that. And Cap'n Abe allus did say the Silts were proper seamen." "Poor, poor Cap'n Abe!" sobbed Louise. "Now, now!" soothed Betty. "Don't take on so, deary. They'll get 'em both. Never fear." But the rising gale forbade another launching of the lifeboat for hours.
The inundation was something of the forgotten past. The beneficent sun had dried the fields. The orchards fertilized by the silt of the recent flood looked more beautiful than ever. A magnificent harvest was forecasted, and, as sole reminders of the catastrophe, there remained only a shattered enclosure here, a fallen fence there, or some sunken road with the banks washed away.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking