| Show THE AMERICAN NILE j SUCH IS THE GREAT RIO GRANDE WITH ITS VAGARIES it la a of habits and mut be seen more than once to be understood der stood flows mainly underground but at times there Is a torrent on top its a river 1600 miles long meas tired in its windings said the man from new mexico speaking of the rio grande tor a few miles at its month slight draft steamers run ap from the gulf of mexico above that it float a craft except at ferries in the old days when new mexico was a province of spain the people along the river oven have ferryboats ferry boats and the only way they had of getting across was by fording for this purpose a special breed of largo horses was reared to be kept at the fords when the river was high for these horses to wade across travelers camped antho bank and waited for alio waters to subside now there are bridges over the river at the larger kio towns and in other places rope ferries and rowboats are tho means of crossing in times of low water a stranger seeing its current for the first time would bo apt to think slightingly of the rio bravo del norte as tho new mexicans love to call the great river meandering in a small part of a very wide channel ho would seo only a little muddy stream for ordinarily nine tenths of the eio grande is underground the water soaking along toward the gulf through tho sands beneath its channel the valley bounded everywhere to left and right by mountains or foothills is sandy and the water percolating tho bands down to hard pan spreads out on each that it may always bo found any wherein the valley by digging down to tho level of the rivers surface for tho greater part of the year the river above ground flows swift and muddy narrowing as it swirls round a sand bar and widening over shallows but the thing that strikes the most queerly is its disappearance altogether for reaches many miles in length of its channel which except it may be for a waterhole wate rholo hero and there is as dry as sahara the river is keeping right along about its business however and where a rock reef or clay bed blocks its subterranean current it emerges to the surface and takes a fresh start above ground running as a big stream which farther down may loso itself in the sands again it is when the floods como down that the eio grande shows why it requires so big a channel for its all tho year round use and demonstrates that if tho waterway acro even wider it would bo an advantage to residents along its banks it is fed by a watershed of vast area and steep descent which in times of rain and melting snowa precipitates tho waters rapidly into tho channel in june when tho snow melts on tho peaks about its headwaters in colorado and northern new mexico and later in the summer when heavy showers cloudbursts and are the order of the day tho rio grande overflows its banks deluging wido tracts of valley and some times carving a new channel for itself changing its course for miles where the valley is unusually wide and sandy as below isleta and in the ley the old channels in which the river used to flow are plainly indicated in the landscape no one who has seen the great river in flood is likely to forget the positive ferocity it seems to display as its waters sweep all before them and woe to the man or beast who is overtaken by them 1 the flood arrives without warning the sky may be clear above when the traveler leisurely jogging across the wide channel hears his wagon wheels grate upon the sand with a peculiar sound it means that the waters are stirring the sands beneath him and then if he knows tho river ho lashes his horse making at all speed for the nearest bank and lucky he is if ho reaches it safe the chances are that before he gets there he hears the roaring of waters up the chan neland sees them coming down toward him with a front like a wall rolling forward and downward as if over a fall with arising flood behind many a man and whole wagon trains have been overwhelmed in this way and bened in sands or cast away on desert banks no human eye has ever seen them again the great river has its pleasing and romantic aspect so fascinating that it is a saying among people who live in its valley that whosoever drinks of its waters and departs will come again to seek them like the nile the Rio Grande enriches tho soil of its valley to tho poff of inexhaustible fertility along its banks in new mexico are fields that tor two centuries havo been cultivated yearly yielding great crops and they are as productive today jas when they first were tilled irrigating canals called acequias ace madras mother ditches convey water from the river to be distributed tri buted through little gates to the fields of the valley which it both waters and enriches A trip along the river reveal a succession of pictures of a primitive civilization of the old spanish american type adobe villages with small flat roofed houses built about antique churches and the spacious houses of the vicos or great men orchards vineyards wheatfields wheat fields and grazing cattle are all features of the scenery of the rio grande the american nile new york sun |
