Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1907 — A Runaway River. [ARTICLE]

A Runaway River.

The problem and the peril of the Colorado river are not difficult to understand. A great river running slowly on a rldga of its own creating, running in a broad and tortuous channel, choked with Islands of mud and bars of sediment, running with a fall of only one foot to the mile, while to the north and westfday a vast depression below seallevel and Inviting the sluggish river to a swifter flow ; between this sunken area and the uncertain course of the river -p great garden of Eden in promise and potency, needing only to be watered and kept, then a canal tapping the river, a flood gathering at the far away sources, a breach in the unprotected bank and the whole volume of the river, forsaking Its ancient and outgrown bed and rushing Into that pit in the desert, sweeping In its course through miles of fertile farms and cutting canyons where canals had been—this is an outline of the situation and a hint of the peril.— A. J. Wells in Sum set Magazine.