The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls by Various
page 21 of 40 (52%)
page 21 of 40 (52%)
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* * * * * You will be interested to learn that the break in the levee near New Orleans has been closed. It was feared that this break would prove very destructive to the surrounding country, as it occurred in the midst of the richest sugar districts of Louisiana. The crevasse was four hundred feet wide, and in some places twenty-five feet deep. No such gap had ever been closed before, and the levee engineers declared it to be impossible to do so. Necessity, however, decided them to make the attempt, and for the past week a large force of engineers and bridge-makers have been at work. They first built cribs around the crevasse; cribs are walls made of timbers which break the first force of the waters; they do not of course stop their flow. When these were in place sacks were filled with earth and thrown down in front of the cribs. In a very short time it was seen that the sacks remained in their places, the water coming through the cribs not having sufficient force to wash them away. More sacks were piled against the wooden wall, and gradually the waters ceased to flow through the break, and the crevasse was closed. |
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