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Show BY PATH AND TRAIL. 223 shrewdness and clearness of the American brain, have not been able to subdue that turbid, treacherous, sullen river, the Eio Colorado. Three times, at a cost of a half million of dollars, the Southern Pacific has wrenched apart and moved back its trunk line, twenty, thirty, and now, through a cloud of profanity, seventy- five miles from its lawful bed. Al ready Salton, with all its buildings, its vast evaporating pans and improvements, is submerged, and fertile farms and ranch lands are destroyed, it may be, for all time. The towns and improved lands of Imperial valley, the grazing lands of the Pioto region of Lower California, Mexico, and millions of dollars invested in railroad and other valuable securities are threatened, and to save them may call for the co- operation of two nations and the expenditure of an enormous sum of money. The whole territory, from the Chuckawalla mountains and far south of" the Mexican frontier, is menaced with anni hilation. Unless the inrush of the Colorado Is checked, it is very probable that the Salton sea and the Gulf of California will again form one great body of water. This means that the inland desert will become a great gulf where, a few years since, there was a field of sand 120 miles from the sea. Thus, sometimes, do natural phenomena, in time, make for the prosperity or decadence of a nation. In spite of evaporation, the profanity of the Southern Pa cific shareholders, and the herculean attacks of 2,000 laborers, led by expert hydraulic engineers, the inland sea is widening, for the waters of the great river are rushing to its assistance at the rate of 8,000 cubic feet per second. This is the volume at the lowest stage of |