Rio Grande Tactics

"The Rio Grande can praetice mre eccentric dodges than any other Stream I know of," said Mr. Joseph Copeland of Laredo, Texas, to a Washington Post man. "lts navigatie uses are almost nil, owing to the numerous sandbars that obstruct the channel, and it isn't deep enough to interfere to any extent with smugglers, who carry on a lively trade between the two republics. It is when a big freshet comes along that the Rio Grande is really in its glory and shows to best advantage. It will take a strip of Texas territory and land it over on the Mexican side or put greaser soil under the protecting wing of the stars and stripes with the greatest impartiality. It plays no favorites, that river doesn't, when it is in a mood for transferring real estáte from one government to another. Last summer it played a trick on the United States garrison at Fort Ringgold. The soldiers get their drinking water from it, but a heavy rain carne along and when the flood subsided the channel was away out of its old bed and the pipes viere left high and dry 200 feet away from any moisture. Theri dispatches vere sent on to Washington and the damage was repaired at considerable expense. Hardly had the works been put in condition again when here comes another rise, and once more the stream left Ringgold in the lurch for its water supply. At this the commanding officer waxed wroth, and sent a letter begging that the post be abandoned. Life was too short, he said, to waste in trying to accommodate one's self to a river that was liable to ehange base every time a hard rain descended and rather than to be subject to the vagaries of the Rio Grande he preferred to move. The war department, however, concluded to give it one more trial, and tks post is still there."