This entire territory would be so absolutely and completely protected from all possibility of overflow by the proposed system of protection from floods or overflow and from Gulf Storms that any part of it could be safely subdivided into acre-garden-homes or Homecrofts. Every acre would be adequate for the support of a family when properly reclaimed, fertilized, and intensively cultivated. The variety of food that would be available for the people living on these one million Homecrofts would be greater probably than would be within the reach of people living in any other section of the world. The mild and equable climate would make practicable a successful growth of every possible product of garden, orchard, or vineyard, including oranges and grape-fruit. Proximity to the Gulf and a network of canals that would lace and interlace the country in every direction would furnish them, at trifling cost or none at all, with the most delicious sea-foods, fish, crabs, shrimps, crayfish, and oysters without limit. Every canal and bayou would furnish its quota of fish and the oyster beds of the Louisiana coast are capable of almost limitless extension. In addition to the cultivation of their Homecrofts for food from the ground, the Homecrofters enlisted in the Louisiana Homecroft Reserve would be afforded abundant occupation in catching or producing sea-food for themselves as well as for export. Anyone not familiar with the country can form no adequate conception of the stupendous possibilities of this bayou and Gulf coast country along this line of production and development. More than this, the luggermen of the bayous and the Gulf are the best coast-wise and shallow sea sailors in the world, and the bays and bayous of Louisiana, if inhabited by a dense population, would once again breed a race of seafaring people--sailors and fishermen--to man our navy or merchant marine. The complete adoption of the plan advocated for the reclamation and settlement of these swamp and overflowed lands, and the establishment there of a perpetual reserve available for military service whenever needed of a million seasoned and hardened citizen soldiers, involves doing nothing that has not already been done by other nations of the world. Holland has built dikes as defenses against the inroads of the ocean greater even than those proposed in Louisiana, and the plans of Holland for reclaiming for agriculture vast areas of land now buried beneath the waters of the Zuyder Zee are much bolder in conception and more difficult of accomplishment. Australia and New Zealand have both demonstrated the practicability and proved the success of a national policy of land acquisition and colonization. What Australia has done in the reclamation and settlement of her deserts, we can do not only on our deserts but also in our swamps.