The Arizona sentinel., 1900-11-14
YUMA'S INDUSTRIES.
Novel Hunt for Gold With a
 Dredger.
Oil Some Picturesque
 Features of the old City.

It is sad compulsion which drives the scribe to write when the air is loaded with the ele- ments of slumber. From the pi- azza of the hotel where 1 am sit ting the Colorado river flows below, after having followed a serpentine course through the valley stretching for miles be- fore my eyes. Mercury marks 85 in the shade and pleasant breeze is coming from the east.
 A few hundred feet away on the eastern bank of the river is the territorial penitentiary, with it's walls of ashen-hued masonry. Directly across the river is old Fort Yuma, now brought into reuuisition as an Indian school.
 Between these typical institu tiOns, one with it's records of crime, the other hopeful for a race of people, is the sluggish river, the greatest stream in the southwest, with water of yellow ish brown, so heavy is it charged with soil it has gathered on it's long course.
 On the river, plying back and forth are many row boats, most ly carrying Indians in gaudy raj ment. Occasionally the ferry boat swings lazily across the river, and once in 6 while an In dian drops down the stream on a small raft loaded with tirewoOd, cut in the cottonwood grove which can be seen a mile or two above the town by the rivers side.
 Just below me is a little river steamer with two barges, the latter laden with mining machin- cry about to be taken to some point up the river.
 At my left is the railroad bridge spanning the river, and at the further California; end is the point where natural gas manifests it's pressure, leading to the hope that oil may be founc here. This gas has been consid erably commented on, but have seen nothing that gives an ade ouate conception of the amour which escapes from the earth Two or three hundred feet square on the California side of the rive is a mass of bubbles of gas, an( I estimated that fully 10G0 bub bles per second rise to the sur face of the water. At Pot Holes twelve miles up the river Cnorth east) from Yuma, it is said tha oil sand has been found. Nea town I cannot learn that there | any further indication of tn presence of oil than the gas However, the lie may be give] to the assertion by present eli matic conditions, geological tes timony is conclusive of glacia action at this point, while tn morraine is only partially ex posed from the silt which tn river has deposited during lonj ages, and nothing can be seen t indicate the basic formation 0 the country, leaving no data O.
 which to estimate the proba
 bility of finding petroleum, whic
 in all probability is giving off it volatile elements to make tn
 bubbles in the water. Whil
 something may be done in an e-
 fort to find oil here, 1 am cor
 strained to believe that the dept
 and exact location of the pa
 streak are so far from bein
 known that it is highly problem
 atical what results may b achieved.
 It was not till late in the after
 noon that an opportunity wa
 presented to throw off the dis
 guise and appear in the role of
 reputable citizen who dOesn
 care a continental for polite:
 It was then that 1 spotted Co
 T. W. Brooks, of Pomona, Lc
 Angeles and other places. Tal ing a stuffed club 1 drove him il
 to a corner and made him te