As the California Development Co. was a water-selling company only, and had no proprietary interest in the lands to be irrigated, it was thought best to form another organization for the promotion of settlement; and in March 1901 the Imperial Land Company was incorporated for the purpose of attracting colonists, laying out town sites, and developing the Sink by bringing its lands into cultivation. Then Mr. Chaffey and the Land Company began an advertising campaign for the purpose of interesting the general public in the scheme; and in order not to frighten settlers and small investors by using in their advertisements and circulars the ominous words “desert” and “Sink,” they changed the name of the basin that they proposed to irrigate and called it “The Imperial Valley.” This title was evidently alluring, because it attracted small investors in all parts of the East, and particularly in New England. The Development Company’s stock was bought, for example, in places as far away from the Salton Sink as Boston, Concord, Hopedale and Waverley, Mass.; Barre and Montpelier, Vt.; Portsmouth, N. H.; Elgin, Ill.; Portland, Oregon; and Toronto, Canada.[7] Settlers soon began to come in; mutual water companies were organized; and before the 3rd of April 1902, when Mr. Chaffey severed his connection with the company, four hundred miles of irrigating ditches had been dug, and water was available for 100,000 acres or more of irrigable land.[8] About this time, however, the future of the Valley was seriously imperilled by unfavorable reports concerning its soil. In the early part of 1902, the Bureau of Soils of the U. S. Agricultural Department published the results of a survey of the irrigable lands in the Colorado Desert, and reported that they were so impregnated with alkali that very few things could be successfully grown on them. “One hundred and twenty five thousand acres of land” (the report said) “have already been taken up by prospective settlers, many of whom talk of planting crops which it will be absolutely impossible to grow. They must early find that it will be useless to attempt their growth.... No doubt the best thing to do is to raise such crops as sugar beet, sorghum, and date palm (if the climate will permit), that are suited to such alkali conditions, and abandon as worthless the lands which contain too much alkali to grow those crops.” (“Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, U. S. Department of Agriculture,” 1901, p. 587.)