Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1897-02-12
THE AMERICAN NILE.
SUCH is THE GREAT RIO. eRANDE
WITH Hts vAcARIss.


It's river 1000 miles long, meas
urcd in its windings," said tho man
from New Mexico, speaking of TIE Rio
Grende. For a few miles, as its mouth,
light draft steamers run up from the
gulf of Mexico. Above that it doesn't
float craft except Mt ferries. In the old
days, when New Mexico was province
of Spain. the people along the river
didn't even have ferryboats, and the
only way they had of getting across was
by fording. For this purpose special
breed of large horses was reared to DO
kept at the fords When the river was
too high for these horses to wade across,
travellers cainped on the bank and wait
ed for tho waters to subside. Now there
are bridges over the river at the larger
Rio Grande towns, and in other places
rope ferries and rowboGts are the means
of crossing.
''In times Of low water stranger
seeing its current for the first time
would DO apt to think slightingly of the
Rio Bravo del Norte, as the New Mexi-
cans love to call the great river Mean
dering in n small part of a very wide
channel he would sec only little muddy
stream, for ordinarily nino-tenths of the
Rio Grande is underground, tho water
soaking along toward the gulf through
the sands beneath its channel. The val
ley, bounded everywhere TO left aud
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 tho valley by digging down
to the lovol of the rivers surface. For
the greater part of the year the river
above ground flows swift aud muddy,
narrowing Us it swirls round sand bar
and widening over shadows. But the
thing that strikes the stranger most
queerly is its disappearance altogether
for reaches, many miles in length, of
its channel, which, except, 1t may be,
for "a water hole hero and there, is as
dry as Sahara. The river is keeping
right along about its business, however,
and where Il rock reef or clay bed blocks
its subterranean current it energies to
the surface and takes q fresh stnrt above
ground. running as big stream which,
farther down, may lose itself in the
sands again.
1t is when the foods come down
that the Rio Grando shows why it re
quires 70 big channel for its all the
year round use and demonstrates that
ii the waterway were even wider it
would DO All 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 pre-
cipitates the waters rapidly into the
channel. In June, when the snow melts
on the peaks about its headwaters in
Colorado and northern New Mexico, and
later in the Summer, when heavy show
ers and cloudbursts are the order of the
day, the Rio Grande overflows its banks,
deluging wide tracts OF valley and some
times carving n new channel for itself,
changing its course for miles. Where
the valley is unusually wido and sandy,
as below Isleta and in the Merilla val
ley, the old channels 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
ferocity it seems 10 display rs its waters
sweep all before them, and woe to the
man or beast who is ovcrtalSen by themi
The flood arrives without warning. The
sky may be clear above when the travel
or, leisurely jogging across the wide
channel, hears his wagon wheels crate
upon the sand with peculiar sound. 1t
means that the waters are stirring the
sands beneath him, and then, il no
knows the river, he lashes his horse,
making at all speed for the nearest
bank, and lucky he is If he reaches it
Hafe. 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 "a wall,
rolling forward and downward as if
over fall, with u rising flood behind.
Many a 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.
THE great river has its pleasing and
romantic aspect, SO fascinating that ii is
u saying among people who live in its
valley that whatsoever drinks of its wa
tiers and departs will come again to seek
them. Like the Nile, the Rio Graude
enriches the soil OF its valley TO the
point of inexhaustible fertility. Along
Ats banks in New Mexico are fields that
for two centuries have been cultivated
yearly, yielding great crops, and they
are as productive today as when they
first were titled. lIrigating canals, call
ed acequias madras (mother ditches),
convey water from the river to be dis
tributed through little gates to the fields
of the valley, which it both waters and |
a trip along the river reveals
a succession Of pictures of u primitive |
civilization of the old Spanizh- American
type. Adobe villages with Enell, aas
rooted houses built about enrique
churches. and the spacious houses of the
vicos, or great men; orchards vineyards,
wheatfelds and grazing cattle are all
features of the scenery of the Eio
Grando, the American Nile Now
York Sun.