El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1911-04-29

| of California as arid rather than wet.
He knows that a great part of it is
irrigated, and he looks upon much of
1t as a desert. Nevertheless, that state
has some of the richest swamp lands Of
the world The Sacramento river which
runs through the middle of it, has a
valley several hundred miles long, and In
that basin there are some millions Of
acres which the government geographers
have just finished mapping. Great drain
age works are going on there. and these
include some of the biggest swamp
reclamation schemes of the Union. A
few years ago that land was worth
nothing As fast as it is reclaimed it
viii sell for from 800 to $1,000 an acre,
and some of it is already covered with
farms where asparagus, celery, tomatoes
and potatoes are raised for shipment to
San Francisco and other parts of the
west. In the Sacramento river they have
put dikes about an island and pumped
out the water, and that island has the
largest asparagus farm of the world.
They have made great drains which have
redeemed lands now devoted to celery,
and vegetables are raised which are
shipped from there to the east. Some
millions of dollars have already been
expended upon that work, and now that
the SURVEYS have been COMPLETED the
drainage projects viii increase manifold.
In talking with the geogTaphers as to
the Sacramento valley one of them told
me that the trouble there was that man
had taken possession of the country
about a thousand years too soon. For
ages past, nature has been bringing
down the earth washings from the
mountains, but she has not, by about
one thousand years, finished her Job
The silt has lodged along the banks of
9Ae rivers and built UP the land there
leaving troughs on each side which the
floods have turned into swamps. These
can be reclaimed, but channels must be
cut and the land so protected that the
streams will not overflow. Some of the
islands which have been redeemed at the
mouth Of the Sacramento will have to be
taken away and a channel sufficiently
large for the river created.
An Empire on the Mississippi.
About the same might be sale of the
lower Mississippi valley. 1t is still earth
IN the making The Gulf of Mexico, so
the scientists tell me, once extended
more than 900 miles farther north, and
all the land of the delta is made I'D of
the rich earth washings brought down by
the great river. They have built I'D the
bed of the gulf and forced the sea back.
Moreover, the streams have dropped their
deposits close to their banks, and have
thus gradually built trougns on each
side of them. 1t. is in these vast troughs
that we now find the swamps. The
Mississippi carries more stuff into them
at every flood. It comes down loaded
with the richest materials of the uplands
and the mountains, and drops a great
part of it there From the state of Mis-
souri, alone, it is estimated, enough soil
TO make a shaft one mile square and
higher than that of the washington
monument is annually dropped into the
Mississippi. Within this same period the
Missouri carries down pile of equal
area which is 400 feet high. and this is
mixed with billions of tons of rich mud
taken from the states of Indiana, Illinois
and Iowa
! This work has been going on through
out the ages, and the earth washings are
now increased by bad cultivation They
are carrying away the best elements of
our SOIL and much of these are stored I'D
IN the swamps. Indeed, the swanips con-
tain the richest fertilizing materials on
earth. They are full of the stuff for
which our farmers give their hard dollars
TO the chemical companies. They are
loaded with phosphtaes and lime, the
latter coming largely from the shells of
minute cr7istaceans, including crabs and
crawfIsh, which live in the swamps, and,
dying, leave their shells there in such
quantities that they have permeated the
mud with phosphate of lime. This rich
stuff is found in all of the swamps, and
there are great quantities of it in the delta
OF the Mississippi
In the Delta.
And what mighty delta the Missis-
sippi hasl 1t is one of the greatest
on earth. You could lose that of the
Nile within it and its lands would make