on buffalo robes, I interrogated the engineers, not only concerning mines and mining history, but as to how they knew the volume of water that might one day, in Southern California, seek to pass through that seventeen-mile narrow gorge known as the Temecula Canon. They explained in detail how they determined the watershed area in those hills and the probable rainfall and then built the bridges and tracks at elevations in the valley well above future waters.
DISASTER AND RECOVERY
Not long after our little party reached home the rainy season began in Southern California, and the beautiful valley where the sheep had been so peacefully grazing was a lake, several feet deep and twenty miles long; out of which roared through the Temecula Cañon a river, twenty and forty feet deep, vomiting forth ties, spikes, rails, and bridges, as man's poison to be cast forth upon the plains by the seacoast.
The California Southern Railroad was gone, but the energy of the white men who built it remained. More rails were ordered, a new location, or pass, through the mountains found, and to-day the Southern California is the bright gem of the great Atchison system.
