20 _ sCHAPAREATS 
of one of these canyons. The water supply from this burned canyon decreased 
immediately, and the season following it ceased to flow entirely. As the chapar- 
ral and trees came back the water reappeared, until the supply, while not equal 
to the original flow, is on the increase. The water in the canyon that was not 
burned continued to flow. These canyons are yery near together, on the south 
slope of the San Gabriel Reserve. 
An instance in which the clear memory of one man extends over a 
period of destruction and restoration of the cover on a watershed is 
given by the testimony of Mr. Walter Nordhoff, a close observer of 
natural phenomena. His observations were made upon his own 
property. One area is located in the Maximinos Canyon in Baja 
California, south of Punta Banda, between Todos Santos Bay and 
Santo Tomas. The watershed extends inland from the coast for 
about 10 miles and has an approximate area of 20,000 acres. Rain- 
gauge records were kept for 12 years, from 1888 to 1900. The annual 
rainfall was from 5 to 22 inches. Nine brooks, permanent at their 
sources, but dry before reaching the main canyon, joined to form 
the drainage, which ran underground for 5 miles through dry-sand 
wash into a lagoon at the ocean line. This lagoon was about a 
quarter of a mile long and 15 feet deep, and discharged into the 
ocean over a sand pit. At the head of the lagoon, in 1880 and until - 
1903, there was a perpetual flow of water from several springs, some 
of which had not been known to change their volume appreciably in 
either good or bad years. The discharge from these springs was 
used to irrigate about 14 acres of land. It was estimated that with 
careful use 5 acres could have been covered and at least 1,000 head of 
cattle watered. 
About 1893 the whole watershed was burned. Following the next 
heavy rain a flood swept down the main canyen to the sea, filling 
the lagoon with silt, charcoal, and half-burned branches, and tearing 
out the sand spit. For the next six or eight years there was barely 
enough water at the head of the lagoon for a few head of ranch stock, 
and even this eventually dried up. It was not until 1902, nine years 
later, when the chaparral cover was restored, that the springs at the 
mouth of the canyon again began to flow. Since then their flow has 
steadily increased. Although there were some floods after heavy rain 
during the time that the chaparral was restocking the watersheds, 
no destructive floods have occurred since 1903, despite the fact that 
there have been rainfalls which, when the watershed was bare of 
cover, would have produced fioods and caused the canyon to run from 
head to ocean. 
Unfortunately, the 15 acres of arable land formerly irrigated by 
the springs was swept away by the floods, thus removing what would 
have constituted a fair basis of comparison of present conditions 
with those prior to 1893. So far as the flow of water is concerned, 
