Bisbee daily review., 1906-09-15


 CoioI ado River, in flood noting how it becomes jammed together and ulti- mately forms a bar.Tcade that stops the rolling sands of the river to form a veritable dam, can easily see how such a river should oe diverted and made 10 flow into a sidc channel al. host ready for its inceJtion.
 It was thus that the Colorado, two years ago, practically damned its straighter course and overfiowed by means of New River" into the Salton Basin.
 There was nothing new about this. The river did the same thing in July of 1891, and there is plenty of evi- dence that it had done so several times before that; only in those days there were no such interests to be ieopardized as there are now, and so little notice was taken of the fact.
 By consulting a may of North Amer ica during early Tertiary times-and such maps are published-lt will be seen that in those days the Gulf of California extended north so as to em- brace all the region now covered by the Salton Basin.
 Since those times this region has been the theater of many stirring events in the way of earthquakes, elevation and depression of land and even of veritable volcanic display.
 The result of these ''doings" was a large lake, which has recently been given the name of Lake Le Coute, some three hundred feet deep and bordered by mountains of slate and schist. Tn course of time the supply to this lake became cut of and it's waters evaporated, leaving a great salt plain with a central portion of almost pure salt deposit.
 Rains gradually cleaned the plains of salt and increased the central de- posit until a time came when Ameri. can capitalists thought 1t good to de- velop the plain as farming land, and to exploit the salt deposit for domes- tic use; but these capitalists took no note of history, and history always re- peats itself.
 Two years ago the salt works were submerged and now the irrigation com lpany's lands are in jeopardy and the railroad has reluctantly had to give way and build succession of new roads around the shores of the ever 7 encroaching sea.
 1f1the effort of the railway and the irrigation company to shut off the flow of the Colorado inao the basin prove futile, what will be tue result? ? Will. the sea go on increasing till its borders reaches sea level. and 1t finds a natural overflow into the Gulf? There is good reason to believe that it will not, and furthermore that the sea has almost reached its limit.
 Evaporation in that section of the country amounts to about ter feet per annum.
 This excessive evaporation will only permit of a lake about twenty miles wide by forty miles long with the nor nal flow of the Colorado going into it. The flood waters once year will en- large the lake to from sixty to seven- ty miles long. It is about that now, and from now till next yea-'s floods it will not increase but rather recede.
 The lake should from this time on be at standstill, as has, for ages, the lake into which the River Mendosa flows in South America, the Caspian Sea into which the rivers Uyai and Volga flow, and the Dead Sea, of Pales tine, into which the Jordan debouches.
 The old shore line which is trace able around the Salton Basin is no in dex to the probable limit Of the Sea today It was formed in ages past when the waters of the rivers entering it were much greater in volume than now. There is a law called the Pre- cession of the Equinoxes-it means that we have times in our winters when the sun Is near to the earth, and summer when 1t is far away; and at
 
 case there is an equable climate, with a minimum accumulation of ice and snow, and a consequent minimum flow of rivers carrying the melted ice away. In the second case we have much ac- cumuiation of ice and maximum How of rivers. The change Is gradual and reaches it's climax about every ten thousand. five hundred years We are now in the most equable period-in about the most equable; but the per iods of floods was not so long ago but that the signs of the old beach lines and the old channel beds of those days are still extant. So with the Salton Sea are found evidences of an old beach line which the waters are not likely to touch during this period.
 It is questionable whether it Is bet. ttI TUT tnC at SC to Adfc this great interior lake or not. There is much to be said on both sides. The sojourners of the Old Picacho region would vote unanimously in favor of the sea; for what used to be their hot dry winds are now cool moist ones and the additional rainfall has been very welcome.
 The towns on the northern side oi the Sea are not so contented- Here the mountains are higher and the con densation and precipitation of moist ure has been greater. so that--takine San Bernardiro for instance-where a dry summer has been usual very ire quent sprinklings have occurred this year.
 It is a question even whether the Sea would not benefit the irrigation company. for there is no doubt but that a little added moisture in the atmosphere would greatly aid growing crops.
 As to the Seas influence on the mining industry. thcugh it may bury