ly natural, for his disappointment and the jibes still
rankled.

At last we were wholly in Mexican territory. With the States behind,
all of our swiftly running water had departed, and we now travelled on
a stream that was nearly stagnant. 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. I think we were both a
little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if an unwashed
black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the willows and
said, "Woof!" or whatever it is that they say when they want to start
up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear across the
border. In fact I felt a little as I did when I played truant from
school and wondered what would happen when I was found out.

Daybreak found us ready to resume our journey, and with a rising sun
any nervousness vanished. What could any one want with two men who had
nothing but a flat-bottomed boat?

All the morning we travelled west, the trees ever drawin