Imperial press and farmer., 1903-01-24
THE PAlOVERDE COUNTRY.
An Interesting Riverside County Cem-
 munity on the Desert.

munity on the Desert.
 Edward F. Hyatt thus writes to the Riverside Enterprise:
 Probably there is no county in the North American Continent that can boast of such variety, such diversity, as this our own county of Riverside, It takes good deal of travel for us to grasp it ourselves.
 The greatest orange garden in the world smiles up at icy, snOw-clad peaks. Tall mountains heaved up two miles above the sea overshadow burn ing deserts many feet below the level of the sea. Hills and valleys and mesas and canyons and wide stretches of level plain-lakes and rivers, for ests of pine and cedar where in the winter men might get lost and perish in the snow; and forests of mesquite on the scorching plains below where many a man has perished of heat and thirst Coal mines and gold mines and salt mines, great ranches of grain and ranges for stock and the richest fields and vineyards of the tropic zone.
 Among the other strange paradOXes of this quiet and modest county is frontier-a genuine frontier, just be- ing settled up by a hardy, adventu- rous class of pioneers, pioneers who are subjected to privatiou,s and dang CTS just as bad as anybody's pioneers.
 Our Riverside Frontier is turned to- ward the east instead of the west 1t is great oasis that has all these years been hidden in the depths of the Colorado desert. It is called by it's settlers Gods Country" some times and sometimes the "PaloVerde Country"
 Away out on the huge and turbid Colorado River, 200 miles from River side, is magnificent widening of the fertile river bottom, a dozen miles wide and fifty miles long. It is cov- cred by forests of mesquite timber which have fer many years yielded abundant feed for great herds of cat tie and horses. It was safe harbor for cut-throats and deSperadoes in early days. Surrounded by great des- erts, it was out of the world. almost. A great slice of the best of it was gobbled up away back about the time of the Civil War by old Senator Blythe he called it swamp land'' and bought it of the State. Forty thou sand acres of it now belong to the Blythe estate. There are besides some sixty thousand good acres outside that Blythe tried to get and has claimed since early times That is another reason why the land has not been taken up by settlers. But now, co., 900 acres is fast settling up with good people. The movement in there only began last March. but already nearly all the land is taken Homes are there and women and children. A school was started in October The first few sessions Wero under a mes quite tree-there wasn't house in the settlement Then a shelter was built, roofed with arrow weeds and three sides built of the same frail thatch. The fourth side was put in few days ago, but the windows are still open. When it is very cold, the children go to bonfire outside and warm themselves. Sometimes they sit out in the sunshine to study, holding books in their own shadows so as not to injure their eyes-plenty of ventila- tion and light in schools out there The floor of the school is ce course the one left there by nature-com- posed eff fine alluvial soil. The teacher wrote to the superintendent few days ago, hoping that next year a pump would be furnished needed to wet down the floor! She had been straining the lagoon water for the children to drink, but was afraid it wasn't wholesome, and the nearest doctor was seventy-fve miles away,