The Colorado Desert 109 



the desert literally blossoms as the rose. No longer is it neces- 

 sary to go to India for dates, or to the equatorial regions for 

 olives. Men do not gather figs from thistles, but here they 

 gather them and other sub-tropical fruits from the desert where 

 nature planted the spiny cactus and the hardiest sage brush. 

 The absence of rainfall negatively fertilizes the soil. The solu- 

 ble plant foods that are leached from the soil in humid regions, 

 in this desert land remain where the rocks give up their mineral 

 salts. Water from the harnessed river and from wells which 

 reach waters entombed in porous sand strata, locked by beds of 

 clay above and below, supplies the magic that transforms the 

 arid plain into a modern Garden of Eden. 



This is indeed an unique region. In part below sea level, 

 surrounded by rugged mountains, the Pacific Ocean hard by on 

 the west, the great Basin Plateau of the American Desert on the 

 east and north, here is the mouth of a great river which has long 

 been delivering its silt-laden waters to the Gulf of California 

 and the Pacific Ocean from the mountainous plateau region of 

 Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, cutting 

 the Grand Canyon to a depth of more than a mile. Whether 

 or not the ocean was willing to receive the contribution of water 

 and earth, these were delivered long and incessantly, sometimes 

 in a moderate stream and sometimes in floods of tremendous 

 proportions. Here was the river's end. At its mouth all that 

 had been carried had to be thrown down with the slackening 

 of the current. Nature has her own ways of handling her 

 problems. One of nature's relentless tools is a river. It must 

 go on forever. Here is an arid plain built by the river, but a 

 river cannot of itself water a plain which it has itself built up. 

 High mountains cut off the moisture-bearing winds from the 

 ocean. So here in this mountain-hemmed basin is an arid desert 

 plain built by a great river. 



A Delta in the Gidf of California 



This is the delta of the Colorado. It was first explored in 



