All the cottonwood logs which had
finally been carried down the stream after having been deposited on a
hundred shores, found here their final resting place. About each
cluster of logs an island was forming, covered with a rank grass and
tules.
Ramified channels wound here and there. Two or three times we found
ourselves in a shallow channel, and with some difficulty retraced our
way. All channels looked alike, but only one was deep.
Then the willow trees which were far distant on either shore began to
close in and we travelled in a channel not more than a hundred feet
wide, growing smaller with every mile. This new channel is sometimes
termed the Bee River. It parallels the northern Mexico line; it also
parallels a twenty-five mile levee which the United States government
has constructed along the northern edge of this fifty-mile wide dam
shoved across the California Gulf by the stream, building higher every
year. Except for the river channel the dam may be said to reach
unbroken from the Arizona-Sonora Mesa to the Cocopah Mountains. The
levee runs from a point of rocks near the river to Lone Mountain, a
solitary peak some distance east of the main range. This levee, built
since the trouble with the canal, is all that prevents the water from
breaking into the basin in a dozen places.
We saw signs of two or three camp-fires close to the stream, and with
the memory of the stories haunting us a little we built only a small
fire when we cooked our evening meal, then extinguished it, and camped
on a dry point of land a mile or two below.
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