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Show THE GREAT LAKE. The Southern Pacific Being Washed Completely Out. Great Excitement Over This Strang-e Freak of Nature The Indians Antici pate Floods and Move oa Higher Grounds. Los Axgei.es, Cal., July 2. A special spe-cial dispatch says the water around j Salton is now within 2,000 feet of the Main street. If it continues to come in as it has been doing, it will wash the Southern Pacific track out in three days. The deepest water found is three feet and the shallowest current fourteen inches. Superintendent Dar-row Dar-row of the salt works is alarmed and wants the railroad company to send men to fix the break in the river. The break is thirteen miles below El Iiio and about seventy miles from Salton. The Indians are badly scared. All the desert Indians have lied to the hills, and even those as high as "the Bon- nong are leaving for the mountains. San Francisco, July2. From the reports of the engineers sent out from Yuma by the Southern Pacific railroad it appears that the Hood near Saltan is even more serious than at first reported. re-ported. The heat continues to be unbearable. Old residents of this city say that while the water is higher' than ever known lfoie, the desert lake is not a new thing and the phenomenon h is occurred frequently, but from the fact that the desert is uninhabited and few venture across it, it has not been noticed. A desert gale blowing from the east last night piled the water up on the west shore of the new lake, so that on this side the water shows no advance to-day. Where this immense body of water comes from is ihe question. Some believe that one of the late earthquakes earth-quakes made a fissure in the mountains and that the water is from the ocean 100 miles distant. Others account for it by a cloudhurst on the west side of the desert. Slaton is in the bottom of an ancient ocean, 2(J5 feet below the level of the sea. Eight miles below Yuma the Colorado river has overflowed its west bank for ten miles since February, Feb-ruary, with a rate from two to five feet deep. Thin overflow runs to the northwest through tiie old natural canal system of the new river for 120 miles, with a current cur-rent of five miles per hour, into the great laguna region. Where the water; has an area of forty miles square, with a depth of from three to ten feet. This body of water is 160 feet lower thau the Colorado river at the point of overflow, over-flow, but 227 feet higher thilii Salton. Indian Wells lake Is 120 miles from the Colorado, but not more than fifty miles from Salton. All that prevents this vast body of water from going into the desert bat in at Salton and filling it is a ridge of sand, nine feet high at its highest point, and about one mile wide. The theory is that the water in the Indian Wells lake has found an underground under-ground passage through this bank of sand and has broken out west of Salton. Sal-ton. If a ditch was cut through the sand in the old river bed, one half of the water in Colorado river would be turned into that ancient sea. There can be no doubt but that not long ago the Colorado turned to the northwest, just below Yuma, and poured its volume of water into the Salton basing which, if filled, would make a lake 100 miles in length, 45 miles wide and 200 feet deep If the basin fills up, the Southern Pacitic rail road will have to move 130 miles of main tine. There ore but few inhabitants inhabi-tants in the desert, outside Of the railroad rail-road employes, and the laborers at the salt works. If the water continues to rise every inhabitant for 100 miles will have to leave, and the railroad be moved to higher ground. The flow of water on the Colorado river at the present pres-ent time is estimated at nearly 1,000,-0O0 1,000,-0O0 cubic feet per minute. The current at the Yuma railroad bridge is nine miles per hour. New Lake at Salton lias already reduced re-duced the temperature from 117 on Saturday to 101 degrees for the past two days. There is no danger of loss of life, as the area of the desert to be filled is so large that if the whole Colorado was turned into it everybody would have time to escape. "Should the basin continue to fill many of the buildings can be moved and most of the property saved. There is no live stock in the whole region. It is a barren waste. A new idea relative to the water is to the ef feet that an artesianuwell at Indio, twenty-four miles distant, was plugged up, and that this caused a subterranean stream to break out at Salton. One thing is certain, the Salton basin and Indian wells region once formed a part of the gulf of California, and that both have been under water at six different periods, three times under salt and three times under fresh water. The shells tell this story. It would not be strange if this is to be the seventh sev-enth time. The natural canal system of the newriver is 830 miles in length. The canals are from 50 to 250 feet wide and from 10 to 2-5 deep to carry the water of the Colorado river to where it is held, above the heads of those who live in the desert basin of Salton. There is waste enough at the present lime to float one of the river steamers of 100 tons burden. Should the water break through the sand bank on the surface, no power could stop it, and the desert will be made into the Colorado lake, the pet dream of General Fremont nearly fifty years ago. If the water does not find a passage from Indian Wells, but does come from other sources, an inlet can be made for it ami the desert irrigated with it, when it would become the garden spot, with fruit and orange groves of the Pacific coas.. The old Indians say that their forefathers told them that long ago the Salton basin was a great sea, and that when the Colorado was high it flowed into it, that when the same bank formed form-ed where it now is. The Indians went and cut a small ditch and the water did the rest, and the latter again filled the lakes. They say that the time has come when it must be a lake again. Many of them have moved to higher giound in order to be reaily for the coming change. Boats and nu n have been sent from Los Angeles to Salton to go and explore the lake to ascertain where the water enters en-ters it. |