The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1897-01-23
THE FREAKIsH RIO GRANDE.
Vagaries of Great River on the
Boundary Which Flows Mainly
Underground

its river 1, 500 miles long, meas
ured in its windings, said the man from
New Mexico, speaking of the Rio Grande.
''For a few miles, at its mouth, light
draught steamers run up from the Gulf of
Mexico; above that it doesn't float craft
except at ferries. In the old days. when
New Mexico was a province of Spain, the
people along the river didn't even have
ferry-boats, and the only way they had of
getting across was by fording. For this
purpose special breed of large horses
were reared to be kept at the fords.
When the river was too high for these
horses to wade across, travellers camped
on the bank and waited for the waters to
subside. Now there are bridges over the
river at the larger Rio Grande towns and
in other places rope ferries and rowboats
are the means of crossing
In times of low water, a stranger see
ing It's current for the first time would be
apt to think slightingly of the Rio Bravo
del Norte, as the New Mexicans love to
call the great river Meandering in small
part of very wide channel he would see
only little muddy stream; for, ordinarily,
nine -tenths of the Rio Grande is under
ground, the water soaking along toward
the gulf through the sands beneath its
channel. The valley, bounded everywhere
to left and right by mountains or foothills,
is sandy; and the water, percolating the
sands down to hard pan, spreads out on
each side so that it may always be found
anywhere in the valley by digging down
to the level of the rivers surface. For
the greater part Of the year the river above
ground flows swift and muddy, narrowing
as it swirls round sand bar and widening
over shadows. But the thing that strikes
the stranger most queerly is its disappear
ance altogether for reaches, many miles in
length, of its channel, which, except, it
may be, for water hole here and there,
is as dry as Sahara. The river is keeping
right along about its business, however,
and where rock reef or clay bed blocks
its subteranean current it emerges to the
surface and takes a fresh start above
ground, running as big stream which,
further down, may lose itself in the sands
again,
''Lt is when the floods come down that
the Rio Grande shows why it requires so
big a channel for its all-the-year- round
use, and demonstrates that if the waterway
were even wider it would be an advantage
to residents along its banks. 1t is fed by
watershed of vast area and steep descent,
which, in times of rain and melting SHOWS,
precipitates the waters rapidly into the
channel In June, when the snow melts
on the peaks about its headwaters in Colo
RADIO and northern New Mexico and later
in the summer, when heavy showers and
cloudbursts are the order of the day, the
Rio Grande overfows its banks, deluging
wide tracts of valley and sometimes carv-
ing new channel for itself, changing its
course for miles. Where the valley is
unusually wide and sandy, as below Isleta
and in the Merilla Valley, the old chan
nels, in which the river used to flow are
plainly indicated in the landscape.
''No one who has seen the great river
in food is likely to forget the positive fe-
rocity it seems to display as its waters
sweep all before them; and woe to the man
or beast who is overtaken by them. The
food arrives without warning. The sky
may be clear above when the traveller,
leisurely jogging across the wide channel,
hears his wagon wheels CRATE upon the
sand with a peculiar sound 1t means
that the waters are stirring the sands be-
meath him, and then, if he knows the
river, he lashes his horses, making at all
speed for the nearest bank; and lucky he
is if he reaches it safe. The chances are
that before he gets there he hears the
roaring of waters up the channel and sees
them coming down toward him with front
like wall, rolling forward and downward
as if over fall, with rising food be-
hind Many man and whole wagon
trains have been overwhelmed in this way,
and, buried in sands or cast away on desert
banks, no human eye has ever seen them
again.
'sThe great river has its pleasing and
romantic aspect, so fascinating that it is
saying among people who live in its valley
that 'whosoever drinks of its waters and
departs will come again to seek them
Like the Nile, the Rio Grande enriches
the soil of its valley to the point of mex
haustible fertility Along its banks in
New Mexico are fields that for two centu-
ries have been cultivated yearly, yielding
great crops, and they are as productive to-
day as when they first were titled. ITi-
eating canals, called acequias madras,
(mother bitches, convey water from the
river to be distributed through little gates
to the fields of the valley, which it both
waters and enriches. A trip along the
river reveals a succession of pictures of
primitive civilization of the old Spanish
American type. Adobe villages with
small flat-roofed houses built about antique
churches, and the spacious houses of the
vicos or great men; orchards, vineyards,
wheat fields, and grazing cattle are all
features Of the scenery of the Rio Grande,
the American Nile. -
A proper respect for the law. and dol