Imperial Valley press., 1910-06-18
EXPLORING PARTY FORGED TO ABANDON BOATS AND BAGGAGE
 AND HIKE OUT THROUGH FLOODED FOREST
Easy to Go down Into the AbeOS Rapids But Buckng Up Stream Another Story. Hot Work Hewing Trails When Mercury Stands at Hundred and Twenty.
 Explorers Need Wings and Web Feet

Abejos and the country through which a levee might be built while the rest of the party tried to get the launch back into the old river or to find a way down the Abejos that would not be impossible to negotiate on a re- turn trip. The pilot of the launch concluded that his engine did not have power enough to buck the cur trying to get more power by re-ad- justing parts, while half the party prospected to the east for a way out of the jungle to the government levee on the Arizona side. Smashing way through dense thickets in a tempera- ture of 120 was hot work, and the pioneers returned at night some tired and unsuccessful.
 Sunday morning the pioneer party, consisting of Clarke, Perry, McHarg and Robinson armed with axes,re- new line and hacked their way through the jungle to an old Indian trail that led them to the end of the levee. They expected to find the Reclamation Service telephone line along the levee, but poles and wires had disappeared for several miles and the levee itself was neglected and abandoned to weeds, brush and gophers. Grass had grown in two old breaks, and in one the water was shoulder deep. On both sides were abandoned cabins and farms gone back to the jungle. Six miles up the levee the pioneers came to a ranch and found that wagon could be ob- tained there. Then they returned to the camp. on the Abejos, having tramped, waded and hewed their way for twenty miles or more.
 But one of the boats seemed fit for trip down into the Abejos rapids, and therefore the party divided on Monday morning, Clarke, Perry, Me- Harg and Robinson going down the river in the boat The others aban- doned the launch and the other boat after further futile attempts to get them back into the old river and some narrow escapes from turning turtle in the rapids, and made their way out along the trail blazed on Sunday, arriving in Yuma late in the afternoon.
 The boat party had the hardest hike. They went down the Abejos fifteen miles to Campo Leno, running through twelve recession bOres, and then wal lowed through mud and quicksand, hauling and showing the boat and clinging to the gunwale to keep their heads above the mud, to the new levee, where they got into communica- ton by telephone with the C.-M. ranch. An automobile was sent down to the levee, and the river explorers arrived in Calexico at two o'clock in the morning.
 The expedition secured confirmation of previous reports on the doings of the river. The Colorado is flowing into the delta by way of the Abejos and cutting back it's bed because of the shorter route and sleeper grade. The river is short -circuted. The only remedy for the condition that menaces irrigation systems in Arizona and California is closure of the Abejos break and construction of a levee that will keep the Colorado in its old bed. The leyee probably would have to be twenty-five miles long from the point of departure from the old leyee, but the immediate need Is for about five or six miles of levee including rock fill across the head of the Abejos. If the Colorado and the Gila behave normally next winter, the break may be closed at comparatively small cost.
 Gov. Gillett has decided that MT James Jeffries cannot legally knock