Daily camera., 1897-08-16
FULL OF FREAKS.
Spme Queer Doings Of the Rio
Grande River.
1t Changes Its Course in the Most
UnaccOuntable Manner and
ObliEes the People of.a
Mexican Town.
It's a freakish river, the Rio Grande

and no mistake; for sudden turns and
capriciousness woman herself can't
equal it, said former federal official
of New Mexico, talking of the recent
floods at Ell Paso. For the 1900 miles
Ct it's course it's character is every
thing by turns from navigable water
to dry land. AT its head, in the noun
famous San Juan county in Colorado,
it is a cold, clear trout stream; in
northern New Mexico its waters are
brown with sand in solution; further
south, where the liquid mud of the Rio
Puereo DIRTY river) pours into it, it's
Waters become .densely muddy, and all
along, on its way to the sea, this queer
river takes on one or another new fea-
ture different from anything that has
preceded it.
The Rio Grande's habit of going IN
der ground here and there along it's
course, leaving a dry channel above,
from which it reappears anywhere
from mile to fifty miles below, has
recently been told in the Sun, which
also has published accounts of it's
quicksands and burrowing eels and
catfish. But there is one performance
by this river that never to my knowl-
edge has been written except in local
history or in the record of some land
case in court. 1t is the way it served
the town of Mesilla, in southern New
Mexico. The place is picturesque,
dignitied looking old Spanish-Ameri-
oh
with orchards and vineyards surround
ing, and stood in the beginning on the
west bank of the river. Before the
b. railroad came it was an important point
IN the wagon freighting trade and it's
people were prosperous and happy.
But they had one cause of complaint.
The routes of all the traffic from Texas
and the north lay on the east of the
Rio Grande, and stages and wagons
$pust ford the river in getting to and
from Mesilla. This was inconvenient
at all times, and involved danger and
delay in times of flood.
"Que lastima' (what a PITY, the
people often said. eff only our town
stood on the east bank of the brave
river!'
Their wish came to pass at last in
startling way. There was an unusual
ly heavy snowfall in the mountains
of the upper country one winter, and,
the spring opening warm, the snow
melted rapidly, with the result of
tremendous flood in the lower Rio
Grande. The waters overspread the
level valley until Mesil.a, Which, lucki
ly, had been built on an eminence, be-
came an island, the refuge of those
persons from the lower lands who had
not been drowned before they could
reach it. The waters at last subsidized,
and then the discovery was made that
the Rio Grande, instead of keeping to
it's old bed on the east, was flowing
past the town, mile to the west of the
plaza.
1t was what the people had said they
wanted, but it took them some time to
become used to the change and get
their landmarks and points of the com
pass to tally with the new order of
things. Many peon or Mexican of
higher degree going or coming from
the plaza with a load of aguaTdiente
inside his skin got an unexpected duck
ing in the river when he bad looked for
dry land, or walked gingerly across
the dry channel where the river used
to run, wondering why he could not
find the Rio Grande. Tales of such
misadventures We're stock stories in the
lower valley for years after the flood.
There was a more tragic aspect of the
business in the epidemic which took
its rise in the eXhalations from the vast
extent of the river bottom left exposed
by the change of the channel. Several
hundred people died from this cause in
the succeeding summer and autumn.
There are orchards and alfalfa fields
in the old channel now, but it's course
can plainly be traced on the face of the
ground; and who knows when the Rio
Grande may not take notion to re-
turn to its old bed and set the maps
at fault again.-N. Y. Sun.