This report, which was widely quoted and commented upon, acted as a serious check to the colonization of the Valley; and if it had been made two or three years earlier, it might have been fatal to the whole irrigation project. Fortunately, however, the crops raised by a few farmers who had already been cultivating this “alkali impregnated” land proved conclusively that the report of the analysis of the soil made by the Government experts was unduly pessimistic, if not wholly erroneous. Almost everything that was tried _did_ grow, in spite of expert predictions, and the practical experience of men on the ground gradually revived public confidence in the productiveness of the irrigated lands. The colonization and development of the Valley then proceeded with great rapidity. The two thousand settlers on the ground at the end of 1902 increased to seven thousand in 1903 and to more than ten thousand in 1904. A branch of the Southern Pacific railroad was built through the Valley from Imperial Junction to Calexico and Mexicali; town sites were laid out in six or seven different places; the water system was extended by the digging of nearly four hundred additional miles of irrigating ditches and canals; and before the 1st of January 1905, one hundred and twenty thousand acres of reclaimed land were actually under cultivation, while two hundred thousand acres more had been covered by water stock. [Illustration: Colorado Delta and Imperial Valley] The observed fertility of the soil completely discredited the reports of the Government experts, and more than justified the prediction made by Professor Blake half a century before that when the Sink should be supplied with water, it would produce “crops of almost any kind.” Grapes, melons and garden vegetables matured in the Valley earlier than in any other part of California; barley was a profitable crop; alfalfa could be cut five or six times a year; and the finest quality of long-staple Egyptian cotton yielded more than a bale (500 pounds) to the acre. Experiments proved also that the climate and soil were well adapted to the culture of grapes, grapefruit, oranges, lemons, olives, figs, dates, pomegranates, apricots, peaches and pears. The fear that men would not be willing or able to do hard work in the hot climate of the valley proved to be wholly groundless. Great heat is not necessarily weakening or prostrating unless it is accompanied with great humidity, and the air of the Valley is at all seasons extremely dry. In a discussion of this subject, Mr. H. T. Cory, formerly chief engineer of the California Development Co., says: