A MEXICAN LAND OF CANAAN 



327 



haunt for many Yankee naturalists," fish- 

 ermen, and big-game hunters; and here 

 and there, in the more favored, well- 

 watered, grassy spots of the higher 

 ranges, hardy American cattlemen have 

 built their adobe homes, where they en- 

 joy the limitless freedom of vast un- 

 fenced areas. The Circle Bar Company 

 at Ojos Negros Ranch runs cattle over a 

 leased territory of two and a half million 

 acres, and a British corporation holds 

 title to something like fifteen million 

 acres ! 



Away down at peaceful, picturesque 

 La Paz, where Cortez repaired his 

 schooners and where, centuries later, 

 Walker, the Yankee filibuster, raised his 

 flag, another Yankee today runs a busy 

 little tannery, turning out 600 sides of 

 good leather every day, for an American 

 shoe factory. Here and there, in hill and 

 valley, Americans are delving for metals 

 or growing the staple frijole. 



But the country as a whole, owing to 

 its many desert, waterless areas, is but 

 sparsely settled, and, as one writer says, 

 "In all its turbulent, romantic history, 

 since the halcyon days when Sir Francis 

 Drake dropped his pirate anchor in Mag- 

 dalena Bay, no wheeled vehicle has trav- 

 ersed its rough and tortuous length." 



Rich as are its mines and fat as are 

 its herds of cattle, its chief source of 

 wealth lies in the cotton-growing regions 

 around Mexicali. 



A DIFFICULT BORDER PROBLEM 



At the Colorado delta, more than at 

 any other point on the whole border, the 

 interests of the United States and of 

 Mexico are closely joined. This is due 

 to the singular topography of that region 

 (part of it is below sea-level) and to the 

 diversion of water from the Colorado 

 River. In the opinion of many irrigation 

 engineers and political students, this pe- 

 culiarly delicate problem of irrigation 

 water rights, as between planters on the 

 American and Mexican sides of the line, 

 respectively, can be solved satisfactorily 

 only by some joint treaty between the 

 two republics, involving either the fixing 

 of a neutral zone or the sale of a small 

 strip of territory. 



* See also, in The National Geographic 

 Magazine for May, 191 1, "A Land of Drought 

 and Desert," by E. W. Nelson. 



Years ago private American interests 

 built an irrigation ditch, taking water 

 from the Colorado River near Yuma to 

 irrigate the Imperial Valley in California. 

 To avoid the difficulty and cost of cutting 

 through the shifting sand dunes west of 

 Yuma, the ditch, following a line of 

 easier resistance, was carried south over 

 the border into Mexico, thence west for 

 some 60 miles, and finally north again 

 into California. Here the famous Im- 

 perial Valley, which now boasts a popu- 

 lation of 65.000 and farms worth a hun- 

 dred millions, was developed, the waste 

 water running down into the Salton Sea. 

 260 feet below sea-level. 



In return for the privilege of carrying 

 this main canal over Mexican soil, the 

 original promoters agreed to allow 50 per 

 cent of its flow to be used in irrigating 

 land on the Mexican side, where a great 

 cotton-growing region, owned almost 

 wholly by American colonists, has re- 

 cently been developed. (In 19 18 its crop 

 was worth nearly ten millions.) 



THE FATE OF A WONDERFULLY FERTILE 

 VALLEY IS AT STAKE 



Because of the international meander- 

 ings of this canal, it is easy to see that 

 water rights are sometimes in conflict, 

 and also that the farmers in California 

 are uneasy, day and night, lest some harm 

 come to the Mexican section of the ditch. 



If this life-giving canal should be cut 

 or destroyed by some force in Mexico, 

 the vast Imperial Valley would dry up 

 and quickly revert to desert, just as hap- 

 pened so long ago when Ghengiz Khan 

 cut the canal above Bagdad and trans- 

 formed the ''sea of verdure" that Herod- 

 otus saw into the wind-blown mounds 

 and sand-filled laterals that mark the 

 modern plain of ruined Babylonia. 



It is clear, then, why the governments 

 of both republics are so concerned in 

 safeguarding the international ditch. 



And as yet, notwithstanding its present 

 great prosperity, the real development of 

 this amazingly rich Mexican region has 

 barely begun. South of the so-called 

 "mud volcanoes,'' east of the Laguna 

 Salada and along the Hardy River, there 

 stretches a vast, tule-grown area, flat as 

 a billiard table and rich as the valley of 

 the Nile, built up through age-long silt 

 deposits from Arizona, Colorado, and 



