THE -DELTA. QF. Ge a? GOLOKRADET 
DANIEL TREMBLY MACDOUGAL. 
WitH MAp BY GODFREY SYKES. 
The Rio Colorado, the Nile of America, rises in the higher moun- 
tains of Wyoming and Colorado, cuts its way through cafions, mile 
deep for hundreds of miles, to the western edge of the great plateau, 
where it emerges to flow through the most arid desert in No 
America, finding its way into the head of the Gulf of California in a 
sub-tropical climate two thousand miles from its source. Here it 
spreads its delta with one edge to the westward against the huge 
sand-dunes or “ algodones ” of southern California, while the other 
stick of the fan lies far to the eastward along the margin of the 
Sonora mesa, where the jungle of the swamp meets the sparse vege- 
tation of the arid gravel slopes and bluffs in striking contrast. 
Between the deserts to the west and to the east the radiating ribs of 
the delta fan, variously intertwined with subdivisions of the river, 
project against the Cucopa Mountains, which now rise clear-cut and 
cameo-like and now loom hazily against the southern horizon. The 
delta and the range beyond it, like many such “unknown” regions, 
have been visited in desultory fashion by the prospector, the hunter 
and trapper, and the nearest camps teem with stories of adventures, 
hazards, and disasters among its sloughs, tidal bores, volcanoes, 
sunken saline plains, and arid mountains. 
e river runs at a low stage during three-fourths of the year, but 
in May the melting snows of the highlands swell the stream in an 
increasing volume until a height of a hundred feet above low-water 
mark is attained in the cafions during June and July, and the entire 
delta is practically submerged, or awash. This is the ordinary beha- 
viour of the “great river,’ the only name by which it is known at 
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