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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 1903)
THE' SUNDAY OKEGOKIAN, "PORTLAND, NOVEMBEE 15, 3903. 31 .TO TRANSFORM CALIFORNIA DESERTS THREE GREAT NEW PROJECTS UNDER THE NATIONAL IRRIGATION ACT . Jv. . . . X. H-v & '. JFWf .vr- Sj- t jf. ,. j. jV yrfr Vi- s. "Jiir -. .-, feoU : . . - c -v-f. - y a 1 . && - . , - 1tS C'-jVK .' .?. v-4 " v v '. .; - '. " 'V , w i MK.X J . v 4. ' v V A , . ., ,i .i "A C .. . .. v . x i.a CEMENT IBBIOATIOX DITCH NO WATER LOST. (UPrER) THE DESERT BEFORE IRRIGATION. (LOWER) IRRIGATED BEDLANDS, CAUFOBNLl. THREE great new projects In Cali fornia which the Government Is considering under the National ir rigation act will, if undertaken, add In the neighborhood of 1,000,00) acres of wonder fully fertile land to the reclaimed area of the Golden State. Government engineers have been engaged upon preliminary sur veys for upwards of a year, and in South ern California, a few weeks ago, 4.000,000 miner's inches of water of the Colorado River were filed upon and appropriated by the Government, which means in real ity the entire flow of this "Nile" of Amer ica. The entire surrounding land over 4.000,000 acres has also been reserved. The ultimate reclamation of land through the great system of dams and canals eventually to be constructed on this river alone will be something over 1,000,000 acres, but the first step In this work will prob ably reclaim about 800,000 acres, of rich delta land. The stqond project which has been ln . vestigated ig the storage of the waters of the King's River, about midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, formed J by two large mountain streams heading ( far up in the snow-capped Sierras. The ! regular flow of the King's River irrigates today an enormous acreage in the fertile San Jcaquln Valley, while the storage of i Its waters by the Government would In- crease its irrigable capacity by at least 1 100,000 acres. At present Its flood waters ' flow wholly to waste, as does likewise almost the entire Cow of the Colorado River, flow Ing through the extreme south ern part of the state and emptying Into the Gulf of California. Still another enterprise which has com mended itself to the Government engi neers is what is known as the Clear Lake project. In the northern part of the state. Situated 1000 feet above sea level, Clear Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, cover ing 40,000 acres. By stretching a low dam across Its lower end and raising its sur face only six feet, 240,000 acre feet of wa ter could be stored, sufficient to irrigate over 200,000 acres of the highly productive land of the Sacramento Valley. Here, where there is consider able rainfall, much less water would be necessary for Irrigation than in the south, cm part of the state, where both aridity and an almost tropical climate necessi tate heavy Irrigation. Clear Lake project, all In all. Is declared by the Federal en gineers to be one of the best Irrigation propositions in the West. California's Share Two Millions. Of the $16,000,000 and over, now to the credit of the reclamation fund, California's share ie more than 52,000,030, and It is desired to begin the expenditure of this sum as soon as the best projects can be determined upon. In the meantime, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized, under the act. to reserve Jthe water rights and withdraw the land wfcich may be irri gated, as well as the reservoir and dam sites, from entry under the Desert Act, the commutation clause of the Homestead Act. and the Timber and Stone Act. Were It not for this express provision in the 1 Irrigation law, which provision, by the way, was vigorously opposed by the Western land-speculating Interests at the time of Its pendancy, every acre In these three, or In fact any other government projects, would be filed upon under the above land laws the njomont the Intention of the Government to establish Irriga tion works under the Irrigation law be came apparent. The reclamation service officials con stantly find the results of these miserable laws operating against the Government's plans. Only after comprehensive surveys, preceded usually by preliminary Investi gations and reconnaissance occupying months of time, can any storage site be pronounced practicable, warranting the Government In withdrawing the land which will probably be Irrigated there under, yet any even preliminary surveys f are watched eagerly by local land dealers and speculators, and with the first inti mation that the project may be favorably considered, filings are made by the hun dred, so that in every project which the Government has taken up, a large propor tion of the land to be Irrigated has been found to be In the hands of private own ers, not settlers living upon It, and anx iously waiting for Uncle Sam to furnish them water or perhaps augment their In sufficient supply, but speculators and stock Interests, who have likely never seen the land, but who "acquire" It and are simply "holding It for a rise." i Thip Is the reason that the true friends , of Western development are urging an ' overhauling of the land laws, under which j such plundering Is possible. ' Unless the nation acts with reasonable I promptitude, before the engineers can got I around to the question of Irrigation every acre of public land will have been taken up under a trio of laws which, had they been framed especially for land-looting, could not have been greater successes. The real friends of the national irri gation act throughout the country who are expecting to see the building of a great empire in the heart of the West, adding wealth and population to the na tion and increasing her strength and in fluence, must not rock themselves to sleep In the eaay belief that this will come about under the conditions as they exist today. They must make one moro de- J termined stand before Congress and effect j the repeal of these land laws; then th I national Irrigation law will be free to ) work out a great and beneficial transfor mation of the desert Into homes. GUT E. MITCHELL. PHOTOGRAPH ING SPOTS ON THE SUN A Picture of Old Sol Taken Every dear Bay for Six gears rASHINGTON, Nov. 9. (Special correspondence.) Daily, for nigh on to six years, it has been the ivontof Uncle Sam to steal a portrait of Old Sol, and. there being no Joshua in these Cays to halt the chariot of the God of Iay, these photographs of his features have had to be taken by the snapshot process, in spite of the vast chasm of 93, 000,000 miles which soparates l(lm from us. Receiving by courtesy of Rear Admiral C M. Chester, superintendent of our 3Caval Observatory a permit to Inspect this fascinating work, I yesterday slung my camera across my shoulder and struck out across the new Rock Creek culvert. It was a June morning in No vember, and Phoebus at my back burned with a fever which in my imag inationbespoke some internal seizure taking him out of season. It was a cloudless day. only the blue, Indian Sum mer haze resting on the hills: but alto gether favorable above for the feat which 1 anticipated. I climbed over the western hill to the city of dazzling white, mosque like, round-domed buildings wherein our national astronomers work, and followed the path beyond where stands, in the open, the colossal camera with which, tender Admiral Chester's direction, the dally sun portraits are snatched from the heavens. The Mammoth Camera. This great camera Is about 50 feet long over all. Its lens stands Isolated upon a Tier of masonry to the north. It3 bel lows is a narrow, inverted trough really a. bhed with peaked, shingled roof about SS Jeet long. Its box Is a house whefeln men might live with comfort. An un wieldy snapshot aparatus for you or me to lift and aim aloft, to be sure! And, If stationary, why Is It directed toward the low, northern sky t hither Old Sol has never been known to stray? I knocked at a little white door and a man stepped out of the big camera box. I naked him this question, and many oth ers, as you will directly see, for he was the man who for these six years back had taken the dally portraits of the sun. 2 had been directed to George H. Peters, one of the" Naval Observatory's scientific staff, and this was he, a most careful, methodical genius, as I discovered. A rrhlte box, with a little peaked roof a box which might have been mistaken for a beehive by you or me was lifted by Mr. Peters from the pedestal of masonry at the north end of the long apparatus. Thus Tras disclosed a metallic plate on which rested two large disks of glass. That nearest the long shed leading into the little house was mounted in a vertical frame and looked dlrtctly through the dark shadows within the shed. This was the lens of the big camera. It has a diameter of five inches and will focus its image at a point 39 feet distant. On the some metallic plate, but north of the lens and mounted on a slanting pivot. Is a. mirror which gathers the sun's Image from the southern sky and projects it back southward, through the lens. But to look at this round piece of glass you would not suspect that it were a re flector. Placing your eye near to it you could see through It. It Is transparent and unsilvcred. And Just as a piece of ordinary plate glass will reflect the sun's rays, so will this unsilvered mirror. But it casts a double reflection one from the front and the other from the back surface. If the two faces be parallel, the reflec tions will overlap. But the surfaces of this carefully made mirror are sufficiently at an angle, one to the other, to throw one reflection of the sun 18 Inches above the other. The lower and more perfect that f-oni the outer face of the glass Is di rected into the big lens, which projects it through the long shed or tube forming the bellows, so to speak, of the apparatus. Sun's Candle Power. But why Is this mirror not silvered? To understand this you must realize for a moment the tremendous luminosity of the f-v To reproduce its light artificially you would have to travel 93,000,000 miles away from earth and there arrange In the sky a cluster of one and one-half octillions (fifteen hundred and seventy five .billions of billions) of sperm candles, weighing one-sixth of a pound each, and burning 120 grains per hour. Such a tre- j mendous light would burn a hole into the film of the fastest photographic plate known, In the least possible fraction of a second for operating a camera shutter. By leaving the silver off the surface of the reflector, the luminosity of the sun Is re duced to one-twentieth of what it would be were the looking-glass surface allowed J to remain. The box of the big camera Is divided into several rooms, the box proper being an ample dark room, such as photog raphers employ to develop ordinary photo graphs. In the north wall of this .apart- ment Is a window opening into the long shed Which we call the "bellows," and covered by a big, camera shutter, behind which stands a skeleton plateholder, mounted upon a pedestal of Iron, which itself rests upon a pier of masonry ex tending Into the earth. The lens outside being stationed upoa one pier and the photographic plate In the holder resting upon another. Jars and vibrations of men moving near are thus avoided. The dark room being tightly closed, the sensitive plate being put In the holder with Its face toward the shutter, and the Image of the sun being projected by the mirror through the shingled camera "bellows" and against the closed shutter, all that now remains to be done Is to open the shutter and allow the imago to Impinge upon the plate. I was now to witness the actual photo graphing of the gun's Image, the explana tion of the apparatus having first been given to me in the technical lingo which astronomers employ. At 11:30 A. M., standard time. Dr. G. F. Culon, an as sistant, uncoverea the lens and mirror, while Mr. Peters stationed himself in the darkroom and adjusted the plate in its J "wuci. jj ui.ii ui uiircLui lunuus ill u. wheel the assistant caught the sun with the mirror and reflected It through the lens so that its image exactly covered a black bull8eye on a target painted upon the outside of the shutter. This target I could see by glancing through the dark chamber inside the shed. Dr. Culon then produced from his pocket a dark-red glass in a metal frame, through which he J squinted at the sun to assure himself that J no small rifts of cloud might be trespass ing in the path of vision. Satisfying him self on this point, he called through a speaking tube the reading of a thermom eter, which hung near the lens. "Sixty nine!" said he. "All right!" came Mr. Peters' voice through the tube. This ob servation, was essential to the sharpness of the picture, inasmuch as changes of temperature alter the volumo of the lens and mirror and change J.hc focal length of the former. Mr. Peters was holding In his hand a screw which moved the plate holder either farther from or nearer to the lens. To adapt Its distance to the thermometer reading was a matter of great care, although not of very vigorous turning at the screw. Between the cold est day in Winter and the hottest day In Summer the focal length' of the lens Is altered nearly an Inch. "All right?" came the voice from the little house. "All right!" answered the voice of the assistant. "Snap!" replied the shutter. And Old Sol's portrait was taken. Ten minutes later the specialist emerged from the darkroom, holding up against the window-light a glas plato 7x7 Inches square, transparent at the borders and with a round black spot 4.3 inches In di ameter in the center. In the upper half of the big black spot were several transpar ent blotches, ragged at the edges. "Well, I got them all right," said Mr. Peters, with a smile of satisfaction. "Got what?" I asked. "Sun spots!" said he. Wlien the plate was dried, he cut the date of the exposure Into the transparent edge with a diamond, and filed It away In a pigeonhole. In the same case reposed 850 such plates, all filed away with their diamond-cut records. This solar photography, begun In Janu ary, 1S9S. had been quietly carried on at the naval observatory until a few weeks ago, when the vanguard of the sun spot procession, which has since excited the scientific world, made Its first register upon Mr. Peters' negatives. It was he who first announced on this side of the water the approach of these great blotches on the sun's surface. The naval observatory is the only institution in the new world which keeps a photographic diary of the sun's doings. Its photo-hello-graph for such is the scientific name of the great camera described Is the only Instrument of the kind now being dally used In America. Measuring the- Spots. To measure these great spots each day Is, of course, a simple matter. It being known what fraction of the sun's great diameter Is represented by the diameter iof its small photographic image, a scale applied under a microscope to any mot tled negative will approximate the di mensions of the spots if a simple formula be applied. The largest spot yet photo ' graphed by the photo-heliograph was conspicuous on October 5. It was about rnOOO -miles long by about E0.C00 miles i wide. A great cross formed by 21 earths, i side by side, horizontally and seven earths, one on top of the other, vertically, could enter this great spot, presuming it to be a cavity. But are sun spots vast cavities, as many astronomers opine? "This great spot, photographed on Oc tober 5, and then seen on the solor limb, or edge, appears on the negative to be a projection rather than a depression," said Mr. Peters. "There appears to be a slight elevation both In the umbra, or dark central shadow, and In the penum- I bra, or gray fringe surrounding. Profes sor Hale, of the Yerkes observatory seems to think, as a result of his spectro- hello graph work, that the umbra and penum bra are elevations. In the neighborhood of the spots there seem to be eruptions where the solar matter Is projected out In space and somewhat cooled by expan sion and radiation. Falling back into the sun again, in the form of sun spots, this matter is seen as a darkened area, like a cinder floating on a sea of fire. "It is our Intention to ultimately meas ure up and publish the changing condi tions as well as the areas of these spots. Examination of the negatives, thus far, reveals that sun spots appear almost al ways on those portions of the sun's face which correspond with our tropics of Cap ricorn and cancer. There can generally be detected a gradual drift from the near est pole, but never across the equator. rlSKIEMMI . aB :'-? mBJBfIi ft f 'W Bifc "Hw 'IP' ' ' i IT l 'PUn i hi J 1 1 fflIlM 5 ifnr IMfMBPrmlffTiH Tf'BW mF llH', v -.t , -- , 1 1 111 1 1 JHi "Jiy.wKwwwaMglsMMSBWttswwM ? WL ,V ; IH-0 "" ";;" ,. --MM&P!' . '.':'. -.-- PI HnHJKv M'.-: j fMmK :'.- ' ;"' -. '"':$ r T ..7, It WBMWuF'mM-;i- ' IK t&i'p' -v-fiv - .- : wiSB IM . . IBHllilWi LiinBnM. JTl J WSm; - , - - 3mm HHiMBBHHBBHiS'fl jBSBaBtmismmM i KEIXECTING SUN INTO CAMKRA. GREAT SUN SPOT, OCTOBER 12, TROtt MB. PETERS' NEGATIVE. i - "In 1909 our photo-heliograph work will have covered a sun spot cycle. According to our observations the minimum, or pe- ,rIod of least spots, was in 1900, and we j estimate that tho maximum ought to ba j due about 1904 or 1905 probably in 1904. I The average cycle Is about 11.1 years, but J there Is less time between the minimum and the next maximum than between the maximum and the following minimum. cioseiy loiiowlng the maximum proper there often appears to be a secondary maximum, so to speak. "The sun, of course. Is a star the only one to which we are sufficiently near to study Its surface In detail. Hence, It Is very desirable to study the sun In order that conditions of other stars may be understood; also because It Is the giver of light, heat and the many other forms of energy on -which we are dependent. The sun, of course. Is a vast reservoir of heat, which it gives forth by radiation. As It cools off it must necessarily con tract, and the amount of contraction bal ances "the amount of heat given off, so that its temperature is maintained nearly uniformly over long periods of time. It Is figured that the sun's shrinkage In di ameter Is about one foot a day. If the sun is hotter at the time of the sun spot maximum the result would seem to be an Increase of the amount of evaporation on earth, and a consequent increase of our rallfall." Aside from its purely scientific Interest in such phenomena, the naval observa tory has a special Interest In sun spots, Inasmuch as some solar physicists now claim to find that the prevalence of these phenomena .has some bearing on naviga tion. Coincident with their appearance disturbances of the magnetic neddle which directs the mariner on his way are felt. The largest group of sun spots observed within the present cycle ap peared on October 5 and disappeared Oc tober 17. Inquiry at the Coast and Ge odetic Survey divulged that Its standard magnetic observatory at Cheltenham, Md., noted a general magnetic disturb ance, setting In about September 27 and lasting up to the present writing. Be tween the 10th and 14th of October an un usually great disturbance was felt, and this was at its height on the 12th, when the aurora was very bright In the north ern sky. On October 19, when another largo sun spot was just coming into view, an other remarkable magnetic disturbance was felt at the Cheltenham observatory. JOHN ELFRETH WATKINS, Jr. Truth Is Great. On entry Patmore. Here, in this little bay. Full of tumultuous life and great repose. Where, twice a day. The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes. Under high cltlts. and far from tho huge town, I sit me down. For want of me the world's course will not fall; When all Its work Is done, the He shall rot; The truth Is great, and shall prevail W hen none cares whether It prevail or not. 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