I was
back in the land of rock again, a land showing the forces of nature in
high points of foreign rock, shot up from beneath, penetrating the
crust of the earth and in a few places emerging for a height of two
hundred feet from the river itself, forming barren islands and great
circling whirlpools, as large as that in the Niagara gorge, and I
thought, for a while, almost as powerful. In one I attempted to keep
to the short side of the river, but found it a difficult job, and one
which took three times as long to accomplish as if I had allowed
myself to be carried around the circle.
Then the land became level again, and the Chocolate Mountains were
seen to the west. A hard wind blew across the stream, so that I had to
drop my sunshade to prevent being carried against the rocks. This day
I passed a large irrigation canal leading off from the stream, the
second such on the entire course of the Colorado. Here a friendly
ranchman called to me from the shore and warned me of the Laguna dam
some distance below. He said the water was backed up for three miles,
so I would know when I was approaching it.
In spite of this warning, I nearly came to grief at the dam. The wind
had shifted until it blew directly down the stream. The river, nearly
a mile wide, still ran with a powerful current; I ceased rowing and
drifted down, over waves much like those one would find on a lake
driven by a heavy wind. I saw some high poles and a heavy electric
cable stretched across the stream, and concluded that this was the
beginning of the dam.
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