The Penn's Grove record., 1891-05-29
THE RIO
ONE OF TIE MOST INTERESTING
OF AMERICAN RIVERS.
II Rises Among snow-Crowned Noun
taips - Its Picturesque Course
Through New Mexico-Canals
Formed From It's Waters.

Among the Rocky Mountains, in
Southern Colorado, are the headwaters of
the Rio Grande, which rises at an eleva-
ton of II, 900 feet above sea level, amid
snow.crowned mountain peaks. Fed by
rills from hills and cauons, tossing over
the pebbles of long, downward slopes,
tumbing in cascades over lodges and
boulders, and falling in a white sheet
over cliffs, it emerges into the mountain
valley and winds as d river to the South.
Among the mountains it is the home of
the swift, darling trout. The deer and
the elk drink of its cool waters, and the
Ute and Navajo Indians camp and hunt
upon its banks.
Entering New Mexico, through which
IL flows almost due south, the valley
widens, and its quieter waters become
vellow.brovn with the sand and soil
washed down from the mountain sides.
In places the banks rise in steep cliffs to
mesas table lands), or mountain sum-
mits, and in other places expand into
fertile stretches, wherein are scattered
the low, ~fat.roofed, adobe-walled towns,
built each about its plaza, or public
square, of the people Of Spanish Ameri-
can race. Here and there, on emipences,
stand the quaint, many-storied house
cities OF the Pueblo Indians, the father
race of the aboriginal Mexican people.
Flourishing modern towns there are
also, since the coming Of railroads to
Astlan, of the type of building Of the
English speaking American immigrants.
The river is crossed by railroad or town
bridges at Albuquerque, FL Paso and
other points of its course.
At a point about midway in New
Mexico from north to south, its waters
take on a 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 Rio 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 r~ivulets in the middle of
wide channels filled only at flood; and
often the waters of the inlet, as in case
of the Rio de Santa Fe, are hidden be-
meath the sands of a dry bed, and ooze
underground to join the subterranean
current of the greater stream. The
river gives Of its abundance to the
villages and cultivated fields through
acequias, or irrigating bitches, that lead
from it to the grounds of the jewellers
upon its banks. Far enough up the
channel to secure the necessary fall to
the lands to be irrigated, a little wing
dam of brush and stone serves to turn
the water from the stream into. the
bitches which follow the bank at a
slight descent as compared with the
downward flow of the swift current.
These canals, which at first run nearly at
a level, parallel with the course of the
stream, as the rivers surface falls more
and more below them, seem to the I'M
trained eye, actually to climb the bank,
aud the "tenderfoot," or uninitiated
stranger, is ready, almost, to assert that
the water in the the ditch is running
up hill.
The main canals that lead from the
river, which are known as acequias
madres (mother ditches), distribute their
waters into smaller water ways leading
into the separate fields; and these
bitches, in turn. through burrows like
ramifying arteries, diffuse the water
evenly over the cultivated gronDl. No
manure is needed on LANDS thus irri-
gated, 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-
tinuous cultivation for 200 years. The
water drawn off for domestic use, when
allowed to settle, is excellent, and by
the residents on its banks and the New
Mexico nomads that thirstily seek its re-
freshing current, it is regarded with a
v~eneration akin to that which the Egyp-
tians and Arabs bestow upon the Nile.
The New Mexicans commonly call this
river, Ell Rio Bravo del Norte (the Brave
River of the North).
Below the clear, cold headwaters IA
vored by the mountain trout, the princi-
pal fish found in the Rio Grande are the
cat fish and mullet, until the point is
reached where the fnny creatures OF the
salt water swim about the submerged
sand bars and tide pools of its mouth.
The river, as it flows southwark
through New Mexico, decreases in ap-
parent volume, but in the comparatively
low and level country bordering it in
Texas and the frontier Mexican States
it gains by the influx of considerable
streams. Throughout its course 1t IS
changeable and treacherous with It's
quicksands and currents that vanish and
reappear. Even where it meets tide
water, under the semi tropical conditions
of the Gulf Of Mexico, its mouth IS SO
choked by sand bars that boats OF mail
draught only can enter it.
Along the middle ard lower valley
the Rio Grande's waters in time of flood
sometimes make new channels, cutting
off bends of the river or breaking away
from the existing bed to rejoin 1t en-
priciously at s,me point below. Plainly
in view, amid fields and villages, are
the depressions indicating the beds In
which the river flowed at some former
time, and through which it may some
day resume its course. Its freaks are
not to be toreseen, and so great n
sudden are its changes of course, that a
town, as was the case Of Mesilla, in the
lower valley, over a quarter of a century
ago, may find itself, of a fine morning,
left high and dry on the side oil the river
opposite to that on which it stood the
night before.-Goldthwaite's Geo9rapa-
;roT Nana