Word: driftwood
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...Helmericks soon found that the surly Yukon was no highway of ro mance. It carried "the silt of half a continent," and floating forests of trees and driftwood were a daily threat to the frail Queen Beaver. Arctic breezes whipped up icy waves that drenched the honeymooners to their skins. When they spent the night on a river island their down-lined sleeping bags were soon sodden with stagnant water...
...into the cold Hoosier earth, tried out the Army's Garand. They passed the ammunition for 105-mm. howitzers. They dug slit trenches, staggered across swaying bridges of wire and planks (the less nimble tumbled six feet down into muddy water), paddled assault boats over mined, smoke-screened Driftwood River, grappled hand-to-neck while instructors barked: "Be ruthless-kill, maim, gouge his eyes, stick your fingers up his nostrils, give him a knee in the kidneys...
...watercolor Chicago bought this week, was comparatively mild, for an Albright: a clutter of old bottles, dead fish, seaweed and barnacle-encrusted driftwood on a table overlooking a harbor...
Snag Boat. Next Henry Shreve went after other barriers: the snags that imperiled navigation for 1,500 miles. "For years boat owners and settlers who had lost their craft or goods had pleaded with Congress to do something about the driftwood menace. The bewildered statesmen could offer no help. It was considered impossible to dislodge the enormous timbers: trees whose roots had dug deep into the stream bottom . . . were packed down with tons of silt. ..." Shreve disagreed. He had invented a "heavy-timbered, twin-hulled snag boat" to do the job. He wrote the War Department, offering to submit...
...Department had already informed Congress: "The clearing of the Red River was all but impossible." For 160 miles, it was blocked by a mass of ancient driftwood called the Great Raft- "so solid in places that a man could ride across it on horseback. Except for the Raft, the Red River would be navigable for a thousand miles." But Henry Shreve and his snag boat, amid bitter wrangling, red tape, lack of money, deaths from boiler explosions and cholera, cleared the Great Raft and opened the Red River...