of the cradle. When the wind blew there was communicated to the muscular sense of baby ape a monotony of feeling and to the ocular muscles the air pressing against the eyelids communicated fatigue. Savage men employed monotony of sounds, such as the magic drum-beat of the Lapp, the Indian's song to the infant and the invalid. Hypnotism is also practiced by our Indians. in their "Ghost Dance," while the Hesychasts of Mt. Athos remained motionless for days with their hypnotic gaze fixed upon a selected object.

The Taskedrugites hypnotized them

selves by concentrating their eyes upon their fingers held to their noses, and thus stood motionless for a long period. Twelve thousand repetitions of the sacred word "om" hypnotized the Dandins of India until they became cataleptic.

The pessimists of science tell us that man is, day by day, straying wider from nature's path and following the high road toward complete artificiality; that he is forgetting how to sleep. Is the day approaching when posterity will depend upon such mechanisms as those described above to launch them, nightly, down the ways of Lethe Wharf?

EDERAL aid is at hand for the mighty struggle with the spring floods of the American Nile, the Colorado River of the West. Private corporations have tilted their puny lances with this plumed knight of the mountains, a transcontinental railroad has bid it turn back, and then, like King Canute, has fled in consternation and surprise from its advancing waves. Now, when a million acres of fertile land and the future of two great valleys are threatened, the Federal

miles of country, and its waters laden with sand and sharp-cutting particles of granite have dug their way into the tremendous plateau of Arizona, and formed that unimagined chasm which we call the Grand Canon of Arizona. Ten thousand vertical feet the river has cut down its bed, and, rolling restlessly, has widened the chasm above it to many miles, grinding and crushing great boulders, and carrying the heavy particles swirling along to the sea. From this red rock the river takes its name, and with this weapon it has achieved its immeasurable task. There

across seventy miles of it being below sea level. The town called Salton is two hundred and sixty-three feet below sea level, the lowest inhabited place in the world, but immediately to the westward the land rises rapidly. Indio, twenty-five miles away, is twenty feet below sea level, and Palm Springs, forty-five miles distant, is five hundred and eighty-four feet above sea level. From this heat-parched depth the country rises gladly to the beautiful San Jacinto Mountains.

rock ceases, and the river flows on for seventy miles over its own delta to where it debouches into the salt waters of the Gulf of California. All of this country now lying between the mouth of the canon and the head of the gulf has been filled in to unknown depth by silt brought down by the river. The fall for these seventy miles is but two feet to the mile and the river, like the Hoogli, wanders at will, filling in its bed and climbing out upon it to flow on a quieter course, or, in times of flood, to flow out upon the lower lands, which it in turn fills in with the detritus of its upper course.

If the upper country is a land of lusty primeval chaos and titanic force; this lower course, by contrast, is a gaunt saltcrusted shadow-land, the haunt of uncertainty and death. In its mighty youth in the mountains the river knows no curb or restraint, but here, in its old age, it writhes amid the ruins of its fortress and dies among the shifting dunes of its delta. So ancient is this delta that even in the vicinity of Yuma continuous bed rock has not been reached below the channel of the river, and in the Salton basin drills have failed to find rock at seven hundred feet.

To the westward of this delta is a vast sunken area which is known as the Salton Sink. It is an oblong concavity nearly one. hundred and fifty miles.

Irrigation from this climbing river-bed to the low lands to the westward looked easy, and in 1900 the work of building a system of canals for the irrigation of Imperial Valley was begun.

A heading was made eight miles below Yuma, but the main canal was not carried westward across the shifting sand hills, but southward over the border into Mexico and thence by a long detour back into California. A concession for this work was given by the Mexican government.

The intake was an open ditch head without control, a breach in the natural levee. In March, 1902, fresh water flowed into the parched and salt-crusted fields. of Imperial Valley and a hundred thousand acres of deathlike waste came under actual cultivation and brought forth crops. whose values are well-nigh incredible.

NEW RIVER DURING FLOOD AT CALEXICO.

The California Development Company, in conjunction with a related corporation organized in Mexico, built these canals and shared in the prosperity which they brought. In September, 1904, there were in operation in this system over seven hundred miles of canals and ditches. The magnitude of the work was more than the company foresaw and was sufficient to keep it in financial straits. To induce rapid colonization lands and water rights were sold at a very low figure and as the first payment required from the settler was too small to furnish the funds for extension and construction it was necessary to secure outside capital to supply

ing without resources to dredge the canal along the silted four miles moved down the river into Mexico, and cut a ditch across from a point on the main river to a point on the irrigation canal below the silted four miles. The distance was only 3300 feet. The cut was made in the course of two weeks and was left without any headgate or controlling devise.

This was completed in October, 1904, and word soon passed that water was flowing into the Salton Sink. The inundated area developed rapidly and forced the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to remove to higher ground over forty miles of its main line. House tops and

water as fast as the land was sold. In the winter of 1903-4 the company was unable to supply all demands for water and as a result there were many crop failures and a consequent agitation for government ownership of the system.

Unfortunately government ownership was not at hand and the company soon found itself with insufficient funds or credit. The summer floods of 1904 filled the first four miles of the canal with silt to such an extent that but two feet of water flowed through it. This was plainly insufficient for the needs of the coming winter grain crop, and the company be

telegraph poles stood up dismally out of the waters, and the valley was again a saline lake.

Freshets enlarged the unguarded canal, and the danger became so imminent that the railroad company in order to save the trade of the rich valleys and to prevent the further washing out of its tracks made a loan to the debilitated canal company. With this money the first effort to safeguard the intakes was made. An attempt was made to protect the lower intake in Mexico by flanking it with a double row of sixty foot piles. The line of these piles was parallel to and between