San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-04-30
LIGHT FLASHES.

Tomorrow is May Day.
The Methodists are having q pic.
mic today at Riverside park.
JIG. Murphy. of Wells Fargo, Is
arrested at Galveston for appropriate
ing $26.
Ben G. Barnes has recured license
to marry Miss Ermin Ford, q gradu-
ate of the San Antonio High school,
and recently popular teacher in the
public schools.
Residents of Iowa street are con-
siderably exercised over the water
works question. A year ago they
We're compelled to lay private pipes
from Plum street, because they were
told that the company would never
lay mains on cross streets in that
quarter. Now mains are being put
down on Iowa street, and the people
are wroth because they had to lay
private pipes.
The Rio Grande as a Servant to Man
At a point about midway in New
Mexico from north to south, the Rio
Grande takes on q new character. The
Rio Puerco Nasty river comes in
from,,the west, bringing down in thick
solution the soil of its alluvial valley.
The earth of the Grande's banks in
this locality easily dissolves, and
from the mouth of the Rio Puerco
southwark the waters are liquid
mud.
The great river both gives and
takes on its journey to the sea.
Smaller streams join it from point to
point, some leaping to it down cannon
bottoms, others meandering as rivu-
let's in the middle of wide channels
filed only at flood; and often the
waters of the inlet, as in case of the
Rio de Santa Fe, are hidden beneath
the sands of dry bed, and ooze un.
derground to join the subterranean
current of the greater stream. The
river gives of it's abundance to the
villages and cultivated fields through
acequias, or irrigating bitches, that
lead from it to the grounds of the
jewellers upon it's banks. Far enough
up the channel to secure the neces.
sary fall to the lands to be irrigated,
little wing dam of brush and stone
serves to turn the water from the
stream into the bitches
which follow the bank at
h slight descent as compared with
rent. These canals, which at first
run nearly at level, parallel with
the course of the stream, as the
rivers surface falls more and more
below them, seem to the unframed
eye, actually to climb the bank, and
the "tender-foot," or uninitiated
stranger, is ready, almost, to assert
that the water in the ditch is running
up hill.
The main canals that lead from the
river, which are known as acequias
madras (mother ditches), distribute
their waters into smaller water ways
leading into the separate fields; and
these bitches in turn, through fur
rows like ramifying arteries, diffuse
the water evenly over the cultivated
grounn. No manure is needed
on lands thus irrigated, for they
are abundantly fertilized by the fine
rich detritus in the water. There are
productive fields in the Rio Grande
valley that have been under con tin
uous cultivation for 200 years. The
water drawn off for domestic use,
when allowed to settle, il excellent.
and by the residents on its banks and
the New Mexico nomads that thirstily
seek it's refreshing current, it is re-
garded with veneration akin to that
which the Egyptians and Arabs be-
stow upon the Nile.-Goldthwaite's
Geographical Magazine.
The speeches which President Har-
rison has made in the South, render
it difficult to realize that he ever sent
q message to Congress recommending
sectional legislation, and they GER
tainly justify the hope that he will
never do anything of that kind
| again.-Kansas City Star, Ind.
| 1t makes very little difference
what the president says compared
with what the president does.
Speeches for fraternity from a rail-
road car, in a recess of congress, are
what the president says. Endeavors
to pas the force bill while congress is
in session are what the president
does. Actions speak louder than
words.-Brooklyn Eagle, Dem.