Freaks Of Kansas Rivers

Channels of Several Streams Have Been Changed by the Flood

The recent Kansas flood in the Kaw river changed the channel of the stream very much and formed some new lakes, says a Topeka dispatch to the Kansas City Times. Near St. Mary's the river cut across a bend some seven miles around, the new channel being less than a mile and a half in length. The old channel is now a lake. Near Manhattan the river was shortened by two cuts. One leaves the old river bed a lake of several miles in length and the other is not much smaller. Both at Lawrence and Topeka new channels were formed, but the waters are to be diverted from these into the old courses.

There is hardly a ten mile stretch along the Kaw river where cutting has not been done by the swift currents--lopping off a short bend here and opening a new channel there. It is impossible to estimate what the total of this shortening will amount to, but it is no small number of miles. Another result of the flood was the gouging out of innumerable holes in the level bottoms far from the channel proper, some of them very deep.