The Colorado River has been aptly called the Nile of America. There is a most remarkable resemblance. In the valley of this American Nile another Egypt could be created. All the fertility, wealth, population, products, art, and romance of the Land of the Pharaohs could be reproduced in the valley of this great American river. A city as large as Alexandria at Yuma, and another as large as Cairo at Parker, are quite within reasonable expectations whenever the resources of the Colorado River country are comprehensively developed.
But even that comparison of possibilities gives no adequate conception of what might be accomplished by the Japanese in the way of creative development in the drainage basin of the Colorado River.
Another Japanese Empire could be made there, with all the vast productive power, population, and national wealth of the present Land of Nippon. That is what the Japanese would do with it if they had the country to develop according to Japanese economic ideals and their methods of soil cultivation and production. They know full well the possibilities of the Colorado River country. Already the Japanese cultivators of the soil are at the Gateway to this great valley, just below the international boundary line in Mexico. They are now doing there the manual labor necessary to develop and produce crops from Mexican lands owned by Americans in the lower delta of the Colorado River.
The Japanese, if they had the opportunity, would give the same careful study to every minute detail of conquesting the Colorado River Valley from the Desert that they gave to defeating Russia in the war they fought to save their national existence against the sea power and land power of the Russian Empire.
They would measure the water that runs to waste, as we have done. They would select and plat the land it should be used to irrigate, which we have not done. They would survey every reservoir site in the Colorado Canyon and test the foundations, which we have not done. They would calculate the aggregate volume of electric power that could be generated by a series of reservoirs in the Colorado Canyon, which we have not done.
They would estimate, as we have done, the total amount of sediment carried by the river every year into the Gulf of California and wasted. They would find that the Colorado River discharges during an average year into the Gulf of California 338,000,000 tons of mud and silt as suspended matter, and in addition to this 19,490,000 tons of gypsum, lime, sodium chloride and other salts,--in all a total of 357,490,000 tons each year of fertilizing material. It is enough to give to 3,574,900 acres an annual fertilization of one hundred tons of this marvelously rich material that would be annually carried by the water to the land if proper scientific methods were adopted for the reclamation of the irrigable land located between Needles and Yuma, which is over three and a half million acres. The fertilization thus given to the land would be of value equal to that with which the Nile has fertilized Egypt every year since before the dawn of history.