The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-10-10
A Raging Torrent Is Feeding
the Salton Sink of Southern
California Colorado River
Has Leaped Its Banks.

The Colorado river no longer emp
ties into the Pacific ocean. but has
leaped its banks in raging torrent
and is building an inland sea of its
own in the Salton Sink of Southern
California
Great photographic engineers. back
ed by unlimited resources, are strain
ing every fiber in heroic effort to
turn the rive.' back into the natural
bed of the waterway, but they have
only a fighting chance for success.
Failure will drive from one of the
most fertile valleys of the world 5000
prosperous farmers. whose crops and
homes will be submerged under a
sheet of water that will have no out
let and rival the great Salt lake of
Utah. This new inland sea already
stretches over 800 square miles of ter
ritory and is advancing toward the
higher levels at the rate of foot Il
day in every direction.
Nature has thus furnished another
striking proof that she is to be reck-
oned with as a worthy rival of those
political world powers whose martial
victories have wrought such far
reaching changes in all of our school
Biographies within the past decade.
By force of arms Gncle Sam has de-
prived Spain Of all her colonies in
the Orient and the West Indies. Tom
my Atkins has obliterated the Boer re-
publics of South Africa and amalga-
mated then into new British crown
colony. The ambitious Jap has eff
fectually checked the onward march
of the cold and stubborn empire of
Russia along the Trans-Siberian rail-
road toward commercial outlet and
strategic base on the Pacific. All of
these conQuests have set new tasks
for the photographers
Nature seems thoroughly jealous of
such blood-bought shiftings of inter-
national boundaries. Her anger has
shaken the very foundations of the
terrestrial globe and compelled mod
ern masters of statecraft and science
to sit up and take notice of her rivalry
in map-changing. Strangely enough.
all recent political upheavals have
been paralleled by unusual natural
disturbances and exceedingly queer
alterations of many features of the
earth's surface. Heligoland-one of
the German inheritances of the Fran
co-Prussian warts vanishing is
land. Several islands of the lower
Chesapeake bay are also ebbing away
with the tide. But these transforma-
tions have been almost infinitisimal in
comparison with those which have
been so suddenly accomplished by less
quiescent moods of nature in recent
years.
The volcanic eruption of Mount Pc
lee and its complete destruction of
st. Pierre on the island of Martinique
served notice that nature was getting
busy. Then, Intermittent rumblings
and mutterings around the globe pre-
saged the recent activity of Vesuvius.
The San Francisco calamity followed
SO closely on the heels of Neapolitan
disaster that most laymen persist in
believing there was sympathetic
connection between the two catastro-
Plies in spite of scientific denials by
seismic experts.
In Behring Sea.
A few weeks ago rumors filtered
through from Alaskan sealers to the
United States coast and geodetic
survey that new island has unex-
pectedly arisen in the Behring sea. A
revenue cutter was ordered to make
an investigation. Its commander,
Captain Oscar Hamlet. naturalized
Dane of thirty years experience in the
revenue cutter service, has now Off
tcially verified the report by notifying
his superiors in Washington that a
new island has been thrust up from
the floor of the ocean as an addition to
the already famous Bogoslof group.
Its crest. nearly 1000 feet higher than