Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1886 — Draining Enormous Marshes. [ARTICLE]

Draining Enormous Marshes.

Few people are .probably aware of the great engineering undertaking in which Kussia has been engaged for years, of draining the Pinsk marshes. These are so extensive as to secure special designation on the ordinary map of Europe, being, we believe, the only case of the kind; and, in point of area, are very much larger than Ireland. Situated on the Russo-Polisli confines, they have become famous in Bussian history as a i-efuge for all manner of romantic characters, and have remained an irreclaimable wilderness in the midst of a prosperous corn-growing region up to wjtliin the last few years. In 1870 the Russian Government first took in hand seriously the abolition of this wild expanse, which, owing to being perpetually more or less submerged and covered with jungle growth of forest, prevented not only communication between Russian districts on either side, but also Letween Russia and AustroGermany. Consequently a large staff' of engineering officers and several thousand troops were drafted into the region, and these have been engaged upon the undertaking since. Up to the present time about 4,000,000 acres have been reclaimed, thanks to the construction of several thousand miles of d tches and of canals, so broad as to be navigable for barges of several hundred tons burden. Just now the engineers are drawing up the programme for next year, which comprises the drainage of 350,000 acres by means of the construction of 120 miles of ditches and canals. Of the 4,000,000 acres already reclaimed, 000,000 acres consisted of sheer bog, which have been converted into good meadow land; 900,000 acres of “forest tangle,” which have been prepared for timber purposes by cutting down all the underwood and thinning the trees; 500,000 acres of good forest land—forest oases in the midst of the marshes—hitherto inaccessible, but which have been connected, more or less, with navipable canals, and thereby with the d stant markets; and, finally, 2,000,000 acres have been thfiown open to cultivation, although only 120,000 acres have been actually occupied up to now. Besides making the canals and ditches, the engineers have built 179 bridges, bored 152 wells from forty feet to eighty feet deep, and 425 from twenty feet to forty feet, and have made a survey of 20,000 square miles of country, hitherto unmapped. When their task is finished, Russia will have effaced from the map of Europe one of the oldest and toughest bits of savage nature on the continent, and a few years will suffice to render the Pinsk marshes undistinguishable from the rest of the cultivated region of the sources of the Dnieper.— Engineering.