80                  HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

cence of the days when the Evansville & Indianapolis road crossed the
river on the old wooden bridge, which stood on piling, or stilts. The
train crew making the Brazil run, on returning to Clay City one evening,
an hour or two after dark, at the time of high water, on stopping at the
tank, were told that the bridge was believed to be unsafe. A superficial
inspection was made. By the holding of a lantern down on a level with
the ties and railing, the track was seen to be out of line, as though a
bent, or section, of the bridge had been slightly moved by the force of
the flood. A consultation of the crew and passengers was held. The
engineer volunteered to walk across, with lantern in hand, with which
to signal the fireman, who was to start the engine with sufficient power
to take the train across, the engineer to catch it on the other side. In
case the bridge gave way, there would be no loss of, nor injury to, life.
The train went over in safety. The passengers, with the others of the
crew, then walked over, when the run was resumed to Clay City. That
night a section of the bridge support gave way and was floated out.
leaving the track (ties and railing) intact, suspended between the end
sections standing on opposite sides of the channel. Boards were laid
on this suspension for a walk and passengers transferred, trains meeting
there from the north and the south. After the flood subsided the bridge
was repaired, or rebuilt, but it was some time before the run across the
bridge was re-established.
    As a result in effect from these frequent and sudden rises and flow
of the currents there have been many changes in the banks and the corre-
sponding location of the channel by erosion, or the washing out of earth
at given points and its deposit elsewhere. In other words, the acreage
of land on the immediate banks of the stream has been cut down or
reduced by attrition on the one side and enlarged by corresponding accre-
tion on the opposite side. As an example of such change, wrought by
time and flood, the south bank of the river at the Luther place, at a point
immediately in front of the present residence of ex-County Commissioner
Jacob Luther, is now sixty-five rods removed and north of where it was
at the time of the government survey of lands in 1816. And just below
this point, where the railroad company diverted the flow of the stream by
cutting an excavation for the straightening of the channel as a precau-
tion to the protection of the bridge, there is now an area of made land
covering the bed of the former semi-circular trend of the stream and
the nook about which it coursed its way, the force of the swelling tide
striking the south end of the bridge. At the angle, or bend, of the stream
a half mile above the Rhodes Bluff, at the mouth of Six Mile, a part of
the ground on which stood the town of Bellaire is now swept by the flow
of the stream. It may be truthfully said that grounds are now being
cultivated or pastured along the course of Eel river which, at a former
time, were so utilized on the opposite side.
    The old roadway leading around the bend of the stream, east side,
a little distance below the site of the Feeder Dam bridge, was so repeatedly
encroached upon and endangered as to force back the line of travel upon
the adjoining lands, the county paying the owners of the premises, in
the course of years, as by the statute provided, for a considerable acreage
so appropriated to the public use. As matter is indestructible and the
law of compensation in Nature universally operative, this area of dirt, set
free by attrition at this point, to the loss of the landholder or the county,
was lodged elsewhere by accretion to the gain of someone else.