stuff hay into the monster's throat. A dam six hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, constructed of piling driven twenty feet into the bed of the river, backed with mattresses of brush and wire was flung across the fatal cut.

On the twenty-ninth day of November the second largest flood ever known on the Colorado swept down from the Gila, raised the lower levels sixteen feet in one hour, overtopped dykes and dam, and abandoning the easy grades to the Gulf poured merrily out into the low valleys. The soft silt of the old basin was no match for the aroused river and it crumbled like fog before a breeze, so that at Imperial there was dug in the course of a few weeks a canon one hundred feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide whose waterfalls cut back toward the intakes

the river would no longer be available for irrigation purposes, and the Sink would be permanently flooded.

Since this washout in November, 1905, there has been a consistent endeavor to close the Mexican intake and reopen the old intakes below Yuma. A substantial headgate has been built at the latter place, and a short distance above, the old intake there is in course of construction another intake of steel and concrete. these upper intakes are of slight importance so long as the lower intake is not effectively closed. The pilings and woven mats of the first attempts gave place to the Hind dam which stoutly held its place, but about which the river found a path.

But

The Mexican intake which might once have been safeguarded for a few thou

in

sands of dollars is now the site of a raging torrent into which millions of dollars in materials and labor have been ineffectually poured. The last attempt during the past few months to save the $25,000,000 values in the threatened country was backed by all the ability and resources of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. An army of laborers and animals was gathered hastily at the

intake. Two thousand cords of willows were woven together on forty miles of five-eighths inch steel cable into a great mat, which was sunk in the stream, and about which great quantities of detritus soon collected. Through this mat eleven hundred piles were driven as the support for a railroad trestle thirty-eight hundred feet in length. Miles of laden cars were hurried to this trestle from every available quarry. Casa Blanca, Obilbee, Tacna and even Patagonia, three hundred and eighty miles distant emptied their quarries until 70,000 tons of rock, 40,000 cubic yards of gravel, 40,000 cubic yards of clay and 100,000 sacks of sand had been hurled into the breach. Meanwhile the army of scrapers and teamsters furnished 300,000 yards of other material. Two entire divisions of the railroad did little else during this time than haul material. The freight bills alone are said to have amounted to a quarter of a million dol

ROCKWOOD GATE IN HIND DAM.

lars, and three-quarters of a million dollars worth of materials were thrown into the gaping wound in the course of three strenuous weeks. Indians of six tribes from either side the border, Mexicans, the Americans toiled in this Mexican wilderness under the glaring sun by day and in the swinging shadows of electric arcs by night to the end that the Mexican intake might be closed and a vast and fertile country saved from the waters.

Epes Randolph, H. T. Cory, Thomas J. Hind, C. R. Rockwood and other able and effective engineers bent all their energies and employed all the great resources at their command in the prosecution of this desperate and costly cure, and presently the glad cry went up all over the southwest that the Colorado had been conquered and that the Hind dam and the levees were holding fast, and that the great destroyer again flowed over its delta to the Gulf. Land values in the un

certain valleys again assumed some stability and it was even said that the Salton Sea would soon be gone.

November had hardly passed, however, when a freshet from the Gila River surged down upon the new works, assaulted in vain the Hind dam, burrowed through nearby dikes and swept victoriously and and irresistibly around the end of the

dam. The levee was cut under at once and the dam weakened at its base. In one day the river cut its bed down five feet and a raging granite-shod torrent two hundred and fifty yards wide and of unknown depth flooded the swollen channels that lead to the lower valleys. The fine silt of the delta that had been baked in the sun was seamed by yawning fissures, and the first break was from a wash from one of these fissures which opened below the dike. Beyond lay $25,000,000 in property trembling in the balance. The Development company had played its last card and the harmless cut they had made to save four miles of dredging had grown like the calf of the oriental queen until it was no longer a suitable pet.

Senators, representatives, and envoys of the threatened state appealed to the President for Federal aid, and he promptly came to the rescue, asking the railroad company to take up the work at once in

anticipation of the extension of governmental assistance at an early session of Congress. His prompt action means much, as it is conceded that another spring freshet would, unless the dikes are immediately rebuilt, cut down the channel of the river to such an extent that the irrigation system would be useless, and would so enlarge the breach that vast sums would be required to build an effective dike. It is estimated that $2,000,000 of government money will be needed.

Steel sheet piling will take the place of the former timber piling and it is probable that the old levee line will be followed. Meanwhile the governmental controlling stations near Yuma for the control of the flood waters of the Colorado and Gila are being rushed to completion, and it is hoped that the strenuous days of the harmless little "Mexican Intake," which has wrought such disaster, are numbered.

SK a traveler to name the saddest, weirdest sound of which he knows, and ten to one he will name the whistling buoy. So saddening is the influence of its mournful, sighing notes, that the Light House Board has to weigh well the advantages of placing one of the buoys in any particular spot against a frenzy of protest and petition from every land dweller within earshot. An earshot is a long way, anywhere from one to fifteen miles or more, depending on the size of the buoy, the roughness of the water, and the condition of the atmosphere.

One peculiarity of the whistling buoy is that the rougher the weather the louder the sound. When the wind and

the waves are high, and the warning is needed, the sound is loudest. When the sea is quiet, the note is hardly more than a sigh, but such a sigh!

The Whistling Buoy now used in this country is the invention of an American, of J. M. Courtenay, of New York. It consists of a huge pear-shaped bulb, with the point to the top, to the base of which is connected a long steel tube. The tube runs through the bulb and is connected. to the whistle by a pipe. Two other pipes, leading from the open air, connect with the tube and valves are so arranged that the air can get in through the open tubes, but can get out only through the whistle. The water, in which the buoy is placed of course fills the tube up to its own level outside. So when the waves passing under the bulb, lift it up, the water in the tube runs out, partly, and

its place is taken by air, rushing in through the two tubes and valves. When the wave passes on and drops the buoy down in the hollow, the water rushes up the tube, compressing the air and pushing it out through the whistle, which makes the note. The higher the waves, the greater the air compression and the more air to a stroke, and consequently the louder the note.

Every year, sometimes oftener, the whistling buoy must be pulled out and replaced with a fresh one, the old one to be scraped, painted and carefully inspected for wear in its valves, chafing gear, etc. It is a work of considerable skill, and frequently much danger, to change these buoys. They are anchored with immense iron sinkers, or with mushroom anchors, and hundreds of feet of chain, depending of course on the location, depth of water, and similar factors. Whistling buoys, of course, are only put in waters sufficiently rough to make them sound, and it requires the calmest water which can be had to lift

the immense freshly-painted and numbered buoy is carefully hoisted on board. On the ship's arriving at the site the great mass of iron is swung clear of the deck, in the powerful grasp of the hoisting engine and deck crane, and it is here that the first danger comes in. If the boat is rocking on the swells to any extent, the raised buoy becomes, from an inert mass of iron, a live pendulum, whose irresistible swings are to be dodged with agility, handled with skill and speed and controlled with caution, and not infrequently the cry of "Lower away, quick!" is heard several times, before the buoy is balanced on the edge and, with a splash and gurgle, goes overboard. Then the unusual sight is seen of two whistling buoys side by side, one fresh and new and silent, the other old and dirty and noisy. The new buoy is silent, usually, for some minutes. The poet might say it hesitated about going to work on its saddening duties, but the tender's captain will tell you, "The tube isn't full of water yet."

Then comes the hard work of the job. The old buoy is secured with a rope and a chain, and lifted a little by the crane, getting a grip about the guarding irons surrounding the whistle. A rope, in a slip-noose, is slipped over the bulb, to fasten around the tube below, and still more lifting is done. Soon all the tackles and "springs" are in position and the word, "Hoist away, carefully now," is given, and slowly, with a sucking, bubbling noise, as the water runs out and the air rushes in, the buoy is drawn from the water. If the ship rolls, the huge affair may swing far outboard, and then, if the crane man is not smart with his "lowering away" of the buoy into the water again, the return swing will crash into the ship, very possibly catching some

one of them out and replace it with another. But suppose the water is sufficiently quiet to risk the operation. The deck of the vessel used in the work is cleared for action, and at the buoy depot