MAKING GEOGRAPHY WHILE YOU WAIT 335 



emptying, or rather opening, into the lower part of the Salton basin. 

 Eecently, for the sake of wider service, new intakes from the Colorado 

 have been opened. All went well until some eighteen months since, 

 when the Colorado, flushed with flood, rose suddenly twenty feet or 

 more above its usual tide and forthwith, instead of hurrying its waters 

 southward to the gulf, began to pour them down the old abandoned 

 river channels into the Salton sink. The fall to the gulf is only one 

 hundred and thirty-seven feet, while the fall to the basin is, as we have 

 seen, nearly four hundred and the distance not much greater ! So 

 there you are; and no earthquakes, volcanoes or sea-water needed in 

 the least ! 



The whole situation and topography are interesting in the extreme. 

 The geologist will tell you that all the region hereabouts is slowly 

 rising; that once upon a time the head of the Gulf of California was 

 farther north, away north of Yuma, in fact, and received the Colorado 

 there, perhaps where the United States government is now building the 

 new dam; and more, an arm of the gulf extended away west nearly to 

 where now is Indio; and in those days the mud of the stream was de- 

 posited farther and farther out in the sea, forming an estuarine deposit, 

 filling up the sea, while, upon the rising bottom, channels of the river 

 ran carrying the mud farther and farther until finally the part of the sea 

 toward Indio was cut off entirely from what now is called the Gulf. The 

 part of the ocean thus isolated presently dried up and left the Salton 

 basin, a salt desert by reason of the evaporated sea-water; and now 

 again, though filled with the fresh water of the river, the wide-forming 

 lake is salt once more in memory of its old-time history. 



The botanist too finds curious confirmation of our story. All about 

 the Salton valley, as near Indio and the Palm springs farther west are 

 curious isolated groves of palms, palms of peculiar sort, the Wash- 

 ingtonia, in fact, now commonly planted in south California cities. 

 But Washingtonia should stand by the sea, as the palms of Florida do, 

 run down the shores of the California Gulf — and so these isolated 

 groves are but the remnant of a tropic flora, once rich no doubt, that 

 all but perished with the drying of the old Salton Sea of which geology 

 tells. The old sea was a fact. Part of this beach is yet to be dis- 

 covered, as is shown upon our map, and no doubt its course might be 

 traced more widely still; its sands along the old-time eastern shore 

 are still blowing about in dunes. 



The waters of the Colorado, if allowed their present course, will no 

 doubt bring back conditions of climate long gone by. Already railroad 

 men declare the air too moist. If so, would the palms again extend 

 their sway along the shores and would tropic verdure once more make 

 the bordering mountains green? Who knows? 



