LOWER CALIFORNIA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 15, 2 September 1911, Page 8

LOWER CALIFORNIA.

i\n American maga/ino ti 11m us that one of the least-known parts of Norfcn America is vno long naiVow peninsula that is so prominent a 1 oat lire on tiio West Coast, stretching ioi 800 miles from the southern border of California. It is mainly a mountainous desert region, thinly populated, and presenting sharply contrasting conditions. Efforts made during the last fifty years to establish agricultural colonies in Lower California have always failed, for hick of water; yet the region has a recorded history going back four centuries, and Jong ago tno .Jesuits proved that pa its could be successfully cultivated. ' The periods of absolute'drought extend over throo and live years. During tin’s time Die smaller desert herbage disappears, but larger, fleshy plants, which have liecome adapted to their environment, remain. Tneso larger plants constitute the most curious desert flora in the world. There arc cactus trees 50 to GO feet high, and a water-storing Thoivillea, which goes on sending out flowering and fruiting vines year after year, without a drop of rain. \Vlnm the heavy rains come “the bare earth is covered, as if by magic, with an abundance of small flowering herbage.” The fauna of this unfavoured region are as strange as the flora. An officer of the United States Department of Agriculture found the desort plains abounding with rabbits, mice, kangaroo rats, and other animals, many of which never drank water. “They live and thrive on dry seeds and scraps of vegetation without ever touching their lips to water, and it has even been found impossible to teach some of thorn to take water in captivity. Apparently they never know tiiirst or the delight of quenching it.” Among the oirds are the giant condor, measuring lift, across tne wings, and ravenous gulls that prey on other birds’ nests. “On two occasions 1 saw gulls alight on nests and calmly pick up young cormorants weighing live or six ounces each, and swallow them entire, the helpless victims being swallowed head foremost, their feet waving despairingly from the gulls’ widely spread beaks as they disappeared.” Perhaps some day pressure of population elsewhere will lead to the cultivation of Lower California by the storage of surface water and the development of the underground supply.