Imperial press and farmer., 1901-11-09

me OctODer number of The Land of Sunshine, Southern Californias popular magazine, contains an illus strated article under the title of 'The Desert Translated" that so forcibly presents the case of looking back upon the Imperial Settlements from the beginning of the next century, one hundred years hence-that we are constrained to give the article entire without comment. The illustrations are three in number. First, the virgin desert; second, the reclaimed desert- a sorghum field of two weeks growth; and third, a view of the main canal that furnishes the water that makes it possible to convert the first into the second. This article is as fOllows:
 LOOKING BACKWARD.
 One hundred years hence the newspaper scribes of the Pacific Coast will be engaged in telling the wonder full things whic-- marked the course of the twentieth century. Taking down from their dusty shelves in cob webbed hooks of public libraries the records of the long gone year of 1901, they will discover prominent notices of an event precisely contemporane- ous with the birth of the century they are describing. And they will proceed to write. something like this:
 What is now the scene of the densest population in California, on New Years Day one hundred years ago, was one of the most forsaken and desolate spots in all the West. We ask our readers to put forth the utmost efforts of their imaginations and endeavor to see the widespread ing delta of the Colorado River as it appeared in the time of our ancestors. Remove for the moment, if you can, the great city in the heart of this marvellous plain, the score of villages and hamlets that mark the horizon on every hand, the long, shaded ave- nues leading out through the country in all directions. Imagine that the three great railways now traversing the Imperial Valley, and the elaborate network of electric lines never ex- isted. Rub out for the instant the miles-the tens of miles-of gardens, field and orchard. Close your eyes to IuC CuOuSduuS OI uOluCS, SuSdI 1dC- tories and other industries word, take away the entire fabric of civili zation as it now exists in that wonder full region and try to think of it as it was when the sun rose over the East ern mountains on January 1, 1901.
 "'No railroads, no homes, no fac tories, no fields or orchards, and-no water! Silence and desolation! A place so barren that even the coyotes shunneu it as hopeless waste! And yet in the first year of the century now dead and gone, the great river was turned from it's channel, and broad canals bore it's waters into the heart of the desert. And, To! Men came to plant and to build, to live and to rear their children, to break the silence of desolation with voices of industry, and to make the barren waste blossom with all the beauties of Eden. One of the great achieve ments of the century, it has now be- come so large part of the very foundation on which our social and economic life is builded, that it is scarcely possible to conceive of South ern California without it. And yet it is related of some of our ancestors, who must have been stupid fellows indeed, that they persisted to the last that the undertaking was visionary, and that where the desert then was, human beings could never live be- cause of the heat and drought
 Such will be the reflections of those unborn scribes, the writers of