The Press., 1897-06-10
THE AMERICAN NILE.
SUCH IS THE GREAT RIO GRANDE,
 WITH ITS vAGARIES.
It Is . River of Frealxish Habits and Must Re Seen More Than Once to Be Un- derstood-FIows Mainly Underground,
 but at Times There Is a Torrent on Ton.

derstood-Flows Mainly Underground,
 but at Times There Is a Torrent on Top.
 Its a river 1,500 miles long, meas ured in its windings,'' said the man from New Mexico, speaking of the Rio Grande. "For few miles, at it's mouth, light draft steamers run up from the gulf of Mexico. Above that it doesn't float a craft except at ferries. In the old days, when New Mexico was province of Spain, the people along the river didn't even have fcrTyboats, and the only way they hal of getting across was by fording For this purpose special breed of large horses was reared to be kept at the lords. When the river was too high for these horses to wade across, travellers campeti on the bank and wait ed for the waters to Subsidc. Now there are bridges over tho river at the larger Rio Grande towns, and i'll other places rope ferries and rowbo;1ts are the means of crossing
 "In times of low water stranger seeing its current for tho first time would be apt to think sliGhtingly of the Rio Bravo del Nortc, as tho New Mexi- cans love to call tho great river. Mean dering in a small part of a very wide channel he would sec only little muddy stream, for ordinarily nine tenths of the Rio Grande is underground, the water soaking along toward the gulf through the sands beneath its cham el. The val ley, bounded everywhere to left and right by mountains or foothills, is sandy, and the water, percolatlng 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 a sand bar and widening over shallows. But the thing that strikes the stranger most queerly is its disappearance altogether for reaches, many miles ill length, of its channel, which, except, it may be, for a water hole here and there, is as dry as Sahara. The river is keeping right along about its business, however, and where a rock reef or clay bed blocks its subterranean current it emerges to the surface and takes fresh start above ground, running as a big stream which, farther down, may lose itself in the sands again
 Ut is when the floods como down that the Rio Grande shows why it re- quires so big a channel for it's all the year round use and demonstrates that if the waterway were even wider it would be an advantayo to residents along its banks It 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 CTS and cloudbursts are the order of the day, the Rio Grande overfows it's banks, deluging wide tracts of valley and some times carving a new channel for itself, changing its course for miles. Where the valley is unusually wide 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 to display as its waters | sweep all before them, and woe to the | man or beast who is overtaken by theml The flood arrives without warning The sky may be clear above when the travel CT, leisurely jogging across the wide | channel, hears his wagon wheels grate upon the sand with a peculiar sound It | means that the waters are stirring the | sands beneath him, and then, if he knows the river, he lashes his horse, | 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 a front like wall, rolling forward and downward as If over fall, with a 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 it is
 a saying among people who live in its valley that 'whosoever drinks of its wa
 ters and departs will come again to seek them Like the Nile, the Rio Grande
 enriches the soil of its valley to the point of inexhaustible fertility. Along | its 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 tiled Irrigating 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 I enriches. A trip along the river reveals
 a succession of pictures of primitive civilization of the old Spanish American type. Adobe villages, with small, Hat roofed houses built about antique
 churches, and the spacious houses of the vices, or great men; orchards, vineyards,
 wheatfields and grazing cattle are all features of the scenery of the Rio | Grande, the American Nile. "-New | York Sun.
 | aH.ak