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Show -23- These lands, in many instances, have been reclaimed and now constitute the most fertile and prosperous tracts in their respective States, bringing wealth and contentment to the citizen, and adding prosperity and luster to the enlightened policy of the Government. The wealth of a nation does not consist in its reserved or hoarded possessions; unpeopled, remote, unproductive wastes within the limits of possible improvement, are rather evidences of a narrow and false policy. The whole public domain of the nation is worth less to it than the allegiance of the people of the smallest State in the Union. A nation's revenues are a concession from the enterprise, the labor, and the accumulation of industrial citizens. All other possessions are a source of expense and weakness, or at least of uselessness. Whenever, therefore, the Government can secure the production of values by encouraging individual enterprise at the cheap price of parting with that which is of no value to it, sound policy will favor such an exchange, subject only to the limitations and restrictions which will tend to secure the end proposed. That part of the Colorado desert lying within the United States is a triangular tract of land between the Colorado River on the east and the Coast Range of mountains on the west, lying wholly within San Diego County, in the State of California. The base of the triangle extends along the southern boundary of California from Fort Yuma westward between eighty and one hundred miles, the apex of the triangle being about one hundred and twenty miles to the northwest, and the sides, as they approach the apex, inclining toward the west. From the report of the several reconnoitering parties sent out by the Government, from United States surveyors who have extended Government surveys over it, and from the reports of Army officers who have frequently traversed it, come the concurrent and universal testimony of its utter |
