THE SALTON SEA—-NEWELL. 333 
But this channel is by no means fixed by nature. The river reserves 
the right in time of flood to wander where it pleases and to spill 
over its banks. During the process of spilling it builds up its banks 
and tends to raise the entire country by the deposit of the mud. 
As the flood recedes the waters generally return to the former chan- 
nels and close, by deposits of mud, the outlets which have been made 
during the flood season. 
UNSTABLE CONDITIONS OF THE COLORADO RIVER. 
The river may be considered to be in unstable equilibrium. There 
is to the west and northwest a large extent of land which is lower 
than the bed of the river, and when the stream occasionally gets out 
of its normal channel and finds one or more of its old channels run- 
ning off toward the north or northwest, its waters ultimately con- 
verge toward the depression in which is now located the body of 
water we know as the Salton Sea. Thus, although nature has ar- 
ranged that the river shall return usually to the channel it has been 
occupying for many hundreds of years, yet occasionally it is permitted 
to wander at will and to discharge some of its surplus waters north- 
erly into the ancient lake bed. 
With these conditions of unstable equilibrium, as above noted, 
it requires only a very little interference from man to induce the 
river to leave its ancient channel and to wander away into some of 
the courses pursued in its youth. This interference has taken place, 
and as a result we have the rapid increase in accumulation of waste 
waters in the sink or depression, this increase being particularly 
noticeable during the years 1906 and 1907. 
CONTINUAL DANGERS OF OVERFLOW. 
If man will keep out of this ancient basin in which the waters 
of the Colorado River have gathered from time to time, little 
may be written. If we go into this depression below sea level 
and interfere with natural conditions, or, as we say, “ develop 
the country,” we are brought face to face with the great forces 
of the river and the uncertainty as to whether it will desire to 
continue in the channel in which we happened to have found it. 
The river may take a notion at any time to resume some one of its 
former channels and to fill with water the basin lying below sea level, 
and which has always been subject to its play. It holds over the set- | 
tler and tiller of the soil, or town builder, the threat that, unless con- 
tinually watched or checked, it may prefer to flow not southerly into 
the Gulf of California but to turn abruptly to the north and swell the 
waters of the Salton Sea. 
