Yields No Electrical Power. Other rivers throughout California and the West are yielding millions of volts annually of electrical energy, for the lighting and heating of cities, the turning of mill-wheels, and the running of electric cars; but the Colorado, though possessed of a potential energy greater than any ten or twenty of these rivers combined, so far has refused to yield up a single volt. Again and again engineers have estimated and suggested, but the great facts remain that it is so uncertain, so wild, so impetuous, so sure to rise when unexpected, so sure to fall when relied upon, that, as yet, no one has been found venturesome enough to try to tame and harness its fierce energy.

Waters to be Diverted by a Dam. Yet in spite of these serious charges I make against the Colorado, it is peculiar in that it is the most useful of the large rivers of the world in another domain. The United States Reclamation Service has spent millions of the people's money in making it of use. At Laguna, a few miles above Yuma, it has built a huge dam larger than any similar dam in the world--that diverts these once turbulent waters into irrigating ditches to convey their life-giving power to thousands upon thousands of acres of desert land. The Blythe Estate is doing the same thing a hundred or more miles higher up, near Parker, on the Santa Fe, and already towns and settlements are springing up on those desert wastes. The California Development Company began this work, four miles below Yuma, in 1900, and in four years had converted that great sink of the Colorado Desert into the richly fertile domain now known as the Imperial Valley, where today are many growing towns.