DIGGING THE IMPERIAL CANAL
The range has yet an open field many miles before it comes to the Colorado River. When the hills reach that point they will disappear, for the waters of that mighty stream will bear the shifting sands away toward the sea.
In the southwestern portion of the desert, one hundred miles across the plain from the Walking Hills, nature has dealt in geometrical figures on an extensive scale.
The plain, at this point, is composed of claylike soil, very hard and firm, unlike that of the surrounding desert, which is loose and sandy. The clay section is smooth as macadam, and is level save for the geometrical figures which are found thereon in relief.
From beyond the clay-paved section the winds have brought the light, loose particles of soil and have piled them up in crescent-shaped hills at various places about the plain. The hills vary in size but not in shape. Each mound is as true a crescent as is the new moon, or as could be constructed by the most skillful landscape gardener. The proportions are carefully preserved in the various mounds.
The horns of the crescents all point eastward. The winds all blow from the west. Like the Walking Hills, they travel slowly across the plain, preserving their shape and proportions but growing a little taller, a little broader, and a little thicker as they go, because of the new material which is continually being brought across the plain by the constructive winds.
There is, no doubt, some good and sufficient natural cause for this peculiar construction. Some unalterable law of nature is probably being followed in the shaping of these sand-heaps, but thus far no one has been able to offer an explanation for this remarkable freak of the winds.