improvement of this nature upon, though the country and commerce to be benefited would justify such a work. The inhabitants were particularly hospitable, and every kindness and attention was shown your assistant and his party during the examina GENERAL: I have the honor to submit herewith report of Assistant Engineer W. H. Hoffman of an examination of Bayou Terrebonne, Louisiana, provided for in act of Congress approved March 3, 1879. Tracings of chart, drawn to a scale of 5, will be forwarded in a separate package. Recommendations of Mr. Hoffman as to plan of improvement are given in his report and are concurred in. His estimates are also approved, and can be expended to advantage on the work during the ensuing fiscal year, viz, $18,800. I am unable to furnish any commercial statistics other than those given by Mr. Hoffman in his report. The work is not susceptible of permanent completion. It is located in the collection-district of New Orleans. The nearest light-house is near east end of Timbalier Island, Louisiana. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, C. W. HOWELL, Brig. Gen. H. G. WRIGHT, Chief of Engineers, U. S. A. Major of Engineers. REPORT OF MR. W. H. HOFFMAN, ASSISTANT ENGINEER. UNITED STATES ENGINEER'S OFFICE, MAJOR: I have the honor to submit the following report on an examination of Bayou Terrebonne, Louisiana: Field work was commenced on the 19th of August and completed the same month. A transit line was carried down the bayou from Houma, using needle for bearing and stadia-rod for distances; soundings and topography were taken, and all information possible had from the inhabitants, who did all in their power to assist in furtherance of the work. Bayou Terrebonne was once an outlet bayou of the Mississippi, receiving its supply from Bayou Lafourche at Thibodeauxville, but the connection with Lafourche was long ago closed, and above Houma it is but a very small drainage bayou, useless for any purpose of navigation. Below Houma it is a tidal bayou, and serves the purpose of a highway, for which reason it is of great importance. For 20 miles it is bordered with large sugar plantations, and 6 miles further by small farms. There are connected with Bayon Terrebonne many other bayous which depend on the navigation of the Terrebonne for their communication with a market. Roads on the bayou banks are entirely useless for moving freight. There is now a railroad connection from Houma with Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad; most freight goes that way. There are two steamers used for bringing freights from plantations on Terrebonne and other connecting bayous to Houma for shipment by rail, but there is a canal in progress which, when completed, will connect the Terrebonne with Lafourche. At Houma the width of the bayou is 40 feet and its depth at low tide is 4 feet, but at intervals for the first 5 miles are shoals where but 2 feet can be carried over at low tide. All navigation at the upper end of the bayou near Houma is done at high tide, which gives from 1 to 2 feet more water, depending on the wind in the bays below. Much of the freight is carried by schooners which run to New Orleans through the lower bays and other connecting bayous; and by flatboats which are cordelled and poled from plantations up to Houma. With the 6 miles from Houma the water deepens to 4 feet at low tide, gradually deepening to 6 feet at the tenth mile, and varying from 6 to 8 feet to the middle of the twenty-third mile, but the width increases very rapidly after the twenty-first mile to 200 feet or more. The right bank for the first 20 miles has a belt 50 feet wide of willows growing from the water's edge to the high land, while the opposite left bank has no willows, but has a belt of sea marsh grass to about the same width between the channel and the road which runs on the edge of the high land. On the twenty-second mile is a canal, Madison Bellanger, and entered from the east, but it has been closed, and water stands on the back side of the levee 2 feet above water in the Terrebonne. At the beginning of the twenty-fifth mile Bayou Lacache enters from the west; it forms the connection with little Caillou Bayou, and all the commerce of that bayou, which is equal to that of the Terrebonne, comes through it and goes to Houma. It is timbered on both sides, and its depth is 5 feet or more. For nearly a mile below Bayou Lacache the banks of the Terrebonne are above overflow, and are very thickly settled; but, from here to the middle of the thirtythird mile, where Bayou Lagraise enters from the west and connects with Terrebonne Bay, both banks are overflowed at the high tide and not cultivated. Opposite the mouth of Bayou Lagraise a canal has been dug through the bank to Lake Bonis. It is 50 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and 300 feet long; it is expected that it will be finished through to Lafourche within a year. The survey was continued down 5 miles further, but for a mile below Bayou Lagraise there is a bar with but 2 feet depth, and no commerce passes down the old bayou. No line was run below the twenty-seventh mile, as the bayou banks which were but very narrow strips of sea marsh between Timbalier and Terrebonne bays, between which Terrebonne Bayou ran in 1850, and which is said to have had a greater depth than that found above at that time, are now broken up by the sea, from both bays, into little isolated grass islands, which are rapidly disappearing by action of the waves, and are now found at intervals of two or three miles down to Caullou Island, where was formerly the month of Bayou Terrebonne. The old channel is filled so as to be like the bays on each side, but a sand or mud flat with no appearance of there ever having been a bayou there. Cutting off the supply of water from the Mississippi stopped also the supply of mud by which the banks were built up. The improvements needed on this bayou consist of cutting overhanging trees on the right bank for 20 miles below Houma, and of dredging the first 5 miles so as to give as much water as there is below, or at least to give enough for the passage of boats. Dredging to a depth of four feet at least, at low tide, will give a highwater channel sufficient for all purposes at present. This would make an estimated cost for the improvement as follows: The commerce to be benefited includes the whole amount coming to the town of Houma by water, up the bayou, which was in 1878-79, 14,175 hogsheads sugar; 20,840 barrels molasses; there was also much rice and other produce, but sugar plantations furnish a greater part of the freight. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Maj. C. W. HOWELL, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. W. H. HOFFMAN, EXAMINATION OF BAYOU TECHE, LOUISIANA. UNITED STATES ENGINEER OFFICE, New Orleans, February 27, 1880. GENERAL: I have the honor to submit herewith the report of Assistant Engineer H. C. Collins, of an examination of Bayou Teche, Louisiana, provided for in act of Congress approved March 3, 1879. Tracings of chart, drawn to a scale of 36, will be forwarded in a separate package. Recommendations of Mr. Collins as to plan of improvement are set forth in his report and are concurred in. His estimates are also approved. The whole amount can be expended to advantage during the ensuing fiscal year, viz, $58,190. I am unable to furnish valuable information concerning the commerial importance of the work. It is located in the collection-district of New Orleans. The nearest light-house is at the entrance to Atchafalaya Bay. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, C. W. HOWELL, Brig. Gen. H. G. WRIGHT, Chief of Engineers, U. S. A. Major of Engineers. REPORT OF MR. H. C. COLLINS, ASSISTANT ENGINEER. NEW ORLEANS, LA., January 31, 1880. MAJOR: After delivering to Mr. Elms the instruments and instructions for the survey of the Courtableau, I made an examination of the Teche. Mr. Harrod, the State engineer of Louisana, gave me the notes of a compass line and the level notes which had been taken on a survey made by Mr. d'Hemecourt and Mr. Elms. As this survey had been made so recently, it was only thought necessary to go over the country and take the notes of topography and soundings and get some other information which was not contained in the notes. Mr. Harrod's survey extends from Washington on the Courtableau to Saint Martinsville. A survey was made by Mr. Duke, under your direction, in 1870, and I had a tracing of this chart also, to see what changes had been made below Saint Martinsville since it was before surveyed, and the present obstructions in it. It was extreme lowWater in all the west delta bayous at the time of the examinations in August, 1879, as there had been an unusually long drought, and there is probably never any less water han there was at that time. Bayou Teche leaves the Courtableau at Barry's Landing, but the upper portion of it is so filled that no water runs down it with less than an foot rise of the Courtableau, and with a rise of 15 feet the channel leaving the Conrtableau has a surface width of but 30 feet. Small as this channel is, a large part of it for the first 4 miles is filled by standing trees, which grow even down to the bottom of it, and with overhanging trees, bushes, and logs and fallen trees. The banks are above the high-water of 1874, which was the highest known. They are entirely of Red River deposit. During the high-water of 1874, flatboats loaded with lumber and fencing material, passed down through this channel, but it could only be used at very high water, when the lower willow trees were so covered with water that boats could bend them down and pass over them. For the greater part of the year only a little stream of water, the drainage of the springs in the bank, finds its way down this channel, and 4 miles from the Courtableau the bottom of the channel is 6 feet above low-water in the Courtableau. How much higher the top of the divide is, there is no data in the notes to show. At Leon's Bridge, which is 13 miles from the head of the Teche, the extreme low-water surface at the time of the survey was 44 feet above the low-water surface in the Courtableau, and it was at the time backwater, all entering from above the bridge being so little as barely to supply the evaporation in the pool of 6 miles backwater above the mouth of the Fusilier. Mr. Harrod's survey was not made by way of Barry's Landing but left the Courtableau about a mile below Washington, passing up the Caron for 2 miles to the head of the Maricoquant, which runs to southward from the Caron. Above this point the Caron is but a rainwater channel; and, below, its banks are like those of the CourtaBean and Teche of Red River deposit, as are those of the Maricoquant, which from the Caron to the junction of the Teche, 4 miles from Barry's Landing and 9 miles from the Caron, is but a small channel, and at the high-water of 1874 it had but 44 feet depth on the top of the ridge over which it runs, just below the place where it leaves the Caron. It is much overgrown with trees and there is no chance for any navigation by it. For the 9 miles it only consists of a series of pools, except during very high water. The fall from the fourth mile to the thirteenth in the Teche is but little, but the channel is much obstructed by trees standing in it. The banks are everywhere above the high-water of 1874, and are bordered by cultivated fields for much of the distance. A road follows the top of the bank on each side of the bayou, and from the extreme bottom to the road, trees are quite thick. At the nineteenth mile the Fusilier enters from the west, and from it comes the entire low-water supply for the Teche. At the time of the examination in August the cross-section of the Fusilier was 175 square feet at its mouth, and the velocity of the current was about 2 feet per second. There are large cypress swamps a short distance up the Fusilier which act as reservoirs and prevent any sudden rise of the stream at its mouth, though above the swamps it must be subject to great fluctuations, as it takes the drainage of a large area of prairie and hill country. There is a channel which forms the head of the Vermillion, and when the Mississippi is very high and much water comes down the Teche from the Courtableau, the current runs up the Fusilier and down the Vermillion. The banks of the Teche like those of the Courtableau at Washington are several feet above the highest floods. The overflow from the lower Courtableau covered the land east of the Teche to within a few hundred feet of the top of the ridge forming the bank of the Teche, the drainage being from the Teche towards the Atchalafaya bayou and lakes. I was told that they nowhere connected except, possibly, through some ditches. Mr. Elm's levels gave the fall in the Teche from Arnaudville at the mouth of the Fusilier to Saint Martinsville as 10.2 feet. The distance is 30 miles. Breaux Bridge is 15 miles below Arnaudville, and 7 feet of this fall is in this 15 miles. The remaining 3.2 feet is between there and Saint Martinsville. Except at lowest water a small steamer runs from Breaux Bridge to Saint Martinsville and connects there with larger ones which run on the Teche below at all stages of water. Between Arnaudville and Breaux Bridge there is an almost continuous line of overhanging trees on one or the other side of the bayou, and in many places on both sides. There are also many logs, the remains of old live-oak trees which had fallen in. The channel is also much obstructed by bars at the entrance of drainage canals or ditches which have been cut into the bayou from fields on its banks to save long drains back, and in rains much mud from the alluvial soil of the fields is washed into the bayou. These ditches are all quite recent and the bars are yet but short, though filling usually about half the cross-section at low-water. In some cases there was a bar 100 feet long, but seldom more than 40 or 50 feet in length. Between these bars there was usually 3 to 6 feet depth and a width of 40 to 70 feet. At the height of the flood of 1874, the bayou was here 200 to 350 feet wide. The depth is greater on tops of these drainage bars below Breaux Bridge, and it is seldom at extreme low-water less than 2 feet, and the pools between have 5 to 8 feet depth with a width of 40 to 80 feet. The high-water cross-section is very nearly the same as that above as far down as Saint Martinsville. There are no short bends, but the bayou runs in long sweeping bends with gentle curves. From Saint Martinsville to New Iberia I counted 41 snags, which are more or less obstructions, and 5 stumps of trees which have been cut off too high, and at some stages of water form very serious obstructions. There are 16 of the bars caused by drainage ditches, which will, if they are to be removed, require each an average excavation of about 500 cubic yards; some of these bars would be much less than this, and can now be passed with no trouble, but all are growing with every hard rain. There are not more than 20 standing trees which would need removal. There is one wreck at Saint Martinsville, which is very much in the way at very low water, but only one side requires to be taken off; this would leave sufficient room for passage. Only sternwheel steamers run above New Iberia. For nearly 10 miles above New Iberia the depth at extreme low-water is 6 to 12 feet. The banks are but little washed and there has been no other shoaling than that due to the drainage canals; but at New Iberia the condition of the bayou changes entirely. The width and depth I was told were formerly very much like the first 10 miles above, but now the width is nearly double what it formerly was, and for several miles its low-water depth is but 24 to 4 feet, and the depth is almost exactly the same for nearly the entire width of the bayou. The crosssection above New Iberia is a natural one, deep in the middle and shoaling towards the edges gradually. The cause of this injury to the bayou must be determined before any plan can be made for the improvement of it. The entire change, so far as it obstructs navigation, has taken place since 1860, but it was probably in progress for years, before that time, unnoticed because it had not interfered with the navigation. When the banks were cleared and roots of the trees gradually rotted, it was less protected from washing than it had been while lined by almost a continuous row of cy press trees. Side-wheel steamboats, such as are used below New Iberia, and not above, are so constructed that there is a strong current from their wheels washing the bottom from some distance away from the mid-channel out to the banks, but no current at all in the middle, consequently the heavier portion of the material washed up is deposited in mid-channel behind the boat, and the swell of the boat, which is greater than that from a stern-wheel boat, washes the banks, and causes the widening of the surface. The stern-wheel boat spends the force of its engine on the one wheel at its stern, and the current from it washes up the bottom in the center of the bayou only, and the tendency of the heaviest part of the material washed up would be to the more quiet water of the sides. So it would have a tendency gradually to improve the navigation, while the side-wheel boat far more rapidly destroyed it. Were the bayou wide, so that boats took different paths in passing up and down stream, it would probably make little if any difference whether side or stern-wheel boats were used, but the Teche is so narrow that all boats follow very nearly one path. The fall from New Iberia to the Gulf is probably but very slight, as the current is up or down with the tide at low river, and there is a sufficient depth from a few miles above Charenton down to the mouth of the bayou for all navigation. There are no overhanging trees and very few snags below New Iberia, they having been removed in 1872 and 1873, under an appropriation by Congress. The only means available to make good navigation of the Teche for the year is to make such dams and locks as are recommended for the Courtableau, and except at high-water have slackwater navigation, giving locks a width of 45 feet in the clear so as to allow the passage of stern-wheel boats, but not wide enough to allow side-wheel boats to pass. The abutments of these locks would remain during high-water, but the gates would be open and the needles of the dams removed for free passage of the current, so that the sediment deposited would be swept out, as at present, at high river. The data of the level-line and other information obtained shows that 3 locks with about 7 feet lift each will carry good low-water navigation to Leon's Bridge. If conditions remain as they have been for the past ten years, the end of all low-water navigation in the bayou does not appear to be very distant. The present low-water supply of the Fusilier is ample for lockage, but an increase of it to almost any required extent can be had by storing the flood supply in the cypress swamps above Arnaudville on the Fusilier. The only limit would be the amount of evaporation in protracted droughts, and the one of July and August, 1879, was an unusually long one, yet there was a discharge at Arnaudville of 350 cubic feet per second; it was greater there than below, as that was the only water entering it at the time. Any attempt at connecting the Teche and Courtableau by slackwater navigation up the Teche would require such an amount of dredging as would make it impracticable, and the supply of water at extreme low stages might be found insufficient for lockage. With the improvements made in other directions this would not be needed. The commerce of the Teche is very great. The entire supplies of a large part of the best portion of Louisiana are received by this route, and the fuel, fencing, and material for buildings, as well as all ordinary supplies, are brought up the stream; the exports being sugar, cotton, cattle, and many other products which are shipped chiefly to New Orleans. I was told that the Teche country produced more sugar than any other equal area of the State, and that it is possible with increased facilities for production, such as cheaper freights and possibility of shipment at any time of year, to increase the sugar crop of this region to far more than the present entire production of the State. The navigation of the Teche is so connected with that of the Atchafalaya and the various routes of communication between that stream and the Mississippi River, and also with improvement of the other delta bayous De Glaise, Courtableau, Atchafalaya, Plaquemine, and Vermillion, that one general plan should be adopted and carried out, viz, making slackwater in the various smaller bayous, and connecting all of them with the great central channel of the Atchafalaya at different points, and providing for its permanent connection with the Mississippi, either through Red River or Plaquemine. The estimate for improving the Teche would be as follows: $1,500 Removing snags and stumps between New Iberia and Saint Martinsville.. Removing snags and trees from Saint Martinsville to Breaux Bridge, 15 miles, at $100 per mile Removing snags and trees from Arnaudville to Leon's Bridge, 6 miles, at $150 per mile Removing snags and trees from Breaux Bridge to Arnaudville, 15 miles, at $200 per mile... 1,500 3,000 Dam and southwest outlet of the Fusilier swamps Engineering and contingencies, 10 per cent... 900 1,000 45,000 5,290 Total...... H. Ex. 54- -2 $58, 190 |