[Illustration: DESERT SORGHUM] The waters of the Colorado carry in suspension one-fourth of one per cent. of solid matter. The color of the water is about like that of lemonade. The analysis shows that this matter in suspension is composed of clay, lime, phosphoric acid, available potash, and nitrogen. The fertilizing value of these substances is about 25 cents per acre-inch of water. As from twenty-four inches to thirty-six inches of water are used in the course of the year for each acre irrigated, it will be seen that the fertilizing value of the water is from $6 to $9 per acre per year. This means that the land will never wear out but will produce abundant crops so long as worked and irrigated. Another question which came up for settlement was the permanence of the water-supply. The answer to this was equally satisfactory. The mean flow of the river is found to be forty thousand cubic feet per second, an amount of water ample to irrigate territory eight times as large as the Colorado Desert. The volume of water in the lower Colorado River is greater in the summer, or dry season, than in the winter, or rainy season. This is because the river has its source in the great mountainous region in the north, where the melting snows on the mountain-tops during the summer season furnish large quantities of water to the streams which make up the river. This brings the greatest amount of water at the season of the year when the farmers use the most, a condition most satisfactory to the projectors of the irrigation system. The main canal, which was begun in 1900, at the beginning of 1903 had grown to be one hundred miles long. This canal is seventy feet wide and eight feet deep, and supplies more than three hundred miles of lateral canals with water. The first season that water was turned into the canal, six thousand five hundred acres of crops were raised where for ages had been nothing but barren desert lands. The second season forty thousand acres were raised, and at the end of the season one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land had been broken ready for seeding. The great sandy wastes have given way to green fields of waving grain, verdant seas of billowy maize and millet, broad meadows of rich green alfalfa, and wide pastures where thousands of cattle dot the plain. In addition to this, new cities are springing up where desolation so recently reigned, and a railroad has crept down toward the Mexican line, and is destined to go on to the line and over, even to the great gulf which ages ago retreated from the land now being turned into a paradise. [Illustration: MILO MAIZE ON RECLAIMED DESERT LAND NEAR HEBER]