Word: silt
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...surprising number of things, from man's moods to the size of the elephant population, show up-& -down patterns that are almost as regular as the rise & fall of the tide. Some are verified by observations covering many centuries (e.g., by means of tree rings and silt deposits in lakes, rainfall cycles have been traced back thousands of years). Other cycle records as yet are little more than preliminary observations. But despite distortions by war and catastrophe, they run remarkably true to form. Samples...
Down with the Ditch. Franklin Roosevelt first tried to carve a canal across Florida's 172-mile neck in 1935, with $5,400,000 of relief money. By 1936 the money was gone, the canal was still a useless ten-mile ditch rapidly filling with sand and silt. In 1937 and again in 1939 the ditch came up for review-and more money-in Congress, and got the cold shoulder. At that time, one of the most vociferous opponents of the Great Boondoggle was New Hampshire's proud, loud Senator Styles Bridges...
Also in high water were the Ouachita, Arkansas, upper Susquehanna, Chenango Rivers. Mules and field hands hiked quickly for higher ground. The cottonwood trees felt silt on their upper branches. The waters came in and rose to angry lifts. Their major attack was on the U.S. war industries...
...Relativities. When Rommel made his first tentative attack, the rains in Ethiopia had washed the red-brown silt down from the hills, swelling the sluggish Nile. The hottest desert days were over...