Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/29

Each flood-tide left its mark here, if nowhere else, and not infrequently the bar was completely washed away; sometimes it was entirely altered in position. Floods in certain rivers were known to leave peculiar deposits on the bars, which rendered them exceedingly treacherous; travelers whose temerity was greater than the knowledge of their guides frequently lost horses and baggage in attempting a headlong ford over treacherous bars containing the flood-deposit from a "soft-mud" stream. Sandbars had a particularly nomadic trait of moving down stream. Oftentimes they were found half a mile distant from the point where only a year ago they offered a sure ford. The uncertainty of their movement was, of course, increased by any change of the estuary of the stream whose eddying waters created them. Many lesser streams made new estuaries for themselves in the high-water season; for the flood-tides found new courses which thereafter became the regular channel. The mouths of certain streams have been known to change long distances by the flood-tides cutting a shorter course to the main stream.