based on his own proposal, and
he was glad even on such terms to undertake the great work he had
longed to do. He at once busied himself in raising money for beginning
the Jetties, and here again his peculiar talents helped him. One of his
friends has said, "His powers of persuasion, his charm of address, and
the magnetism of his personality opened the hearts and purses of
whomever he pleaded with in support of his engineering devices. He was
a most lovable man." Moreover, he was an excellent business man. He had
indeed a marvelous faculty for obtaining funds with which to carry on
his works; and in that time of financial distress such a faculty was
very necessary.

The theory on which he based his jetties was really extremely simple.
He said that, other things being equal, the amount of sediment which a
river can carry is in direct proportion to its velocity. When, for any
reason, the current becomes slower at any special place, it drops part
of its burden of sediment at that place, and when it becomes faster
again it picks up more. Now, one thing that makes a river slower is an
increase of its width, because then there is more frictional surface;
and contrariwise, one of the things that make it faster is a narrowing
of its width. Narrow the Mississippi then, at its mouth, said Eads, and
it will become swifter there, and consequently it will remove its soft
bottom by picking up the sediment (of which it will then hold much
more), and by carrying it out to the gulf, to be lost in deep water and
swept away by currents; and thus, he said, you will have your deep
channel. In other words, if you give the river some assistance by
keeping its current together, it will do all the necessary labor and
scour out its own bottom.

Today, since this theory has been proved, it seems as simple as A B C.
And it is almost impossible to believe what opposition it then aroused.
People were not only set on blocking the undertaking, but they were
actually ignorant enough to deny that the velocity of water had any
connection with its sediment-carrying power. Even if the narrowing
process should happen to give a channel through the present bar, they
said, a new one would presently form beyond, and so the jetties would
have to be extended every year.

However, Eads had his contract and his backers and his ideas and his
faith in them; and he set to work on the little pass. The actual delta
of the Mississippi consists of nothing but water, m