110 Mi-s.sissippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



honiestoad, tliat could be had foi- the takhig, if favorably located, now sells 

 readily at |2() per acre. 



Carping critics asserted that as the mythical rain belt never reached the 

 great plains, and the cloudless sky and never-failing sunshine throughout 

 the si)ring and summer months precluded the possibility of the growth of 

 cereals or vegetables, yet here, in the midst of these impossibilities, is a 

 broad expanse of valley, embracing many thousand acres, which is being 

 rendered more certainly productive than the richest bottoms of the Missis- 

 sippi or the Missouri. The wisdom of man has overcome the seemingly in- 

 superable diliiculties of nature — has set aside the natural laws and caused 

 this hitherto trackless waste to smile with the richest harvest. Every man is 

 his own thunder storm, and while nature too often floods the fields or with- 

 holds the needed rain at a critical period in the life of the crops in other re- 

 gions, here the water is turned on at pleasure, the sediment of the stream 

 furnishing an extra amount of richness to the soil. Prejudice and unbelief 

 have given place to knowledge and absolute conviction. The scheme of ir- 

 rigation in Western Kansas is to-day a magnificent success. Here, beyond 

 the rain belt, on these lands redeemed by the skill of man from the desert, 

 lire to be the hajDpy homes of thousands, prosperous communities, whole- 

 some laws and the reign of wide-lapped plenty. Quietly the great work has 

 been accomplished. A system has been established, the fertility of the valley 

 of the Nile imparted to tens of thousands of acres, that not a decade of years 

 hence will be pointed to as the crown of Kansas, and will endure for centu- 

 ries as the most economical mode of farming known to man. A distinguished 

 engineer shows conclusively, from a record of observations extending over a 

 long series of years, in one case 142, that the annual discharge of water from 

 the Danube, Ehine, Oder, Elbe and Vistula, five of the principal rivers of 

 Europe, has been continually decreasing, as the area drained by these rivers 

 has been brought more and more under cultivation. The decrease of water 

 discharge has been most rapid during the last twenty years. Means should 

 be taken to retain the wat'^r falling from the clouds within the area 

 upon which it falls. This could be accomplished by the building of dams in 

 water courses, and by the construction of reservoirs near the streams which 

 overflow. The draining of existing lakes and ponds should be prohibited. A 

 net-work of navigable canals should be constructed wherever practicable. 



This is substantially the policy that has become'so successful in China. A 

 large part of Western Kansas and Nebraska, of Eastern Colorado and New- 

 Mexico requires irrigation before the soil can be cultivated and made to pro- 

 duce the usual variety of farm products. At present the land is used, when 

 used at all, for grazing only. The big stock men control the land lying along 

 the Arkansas, and the few other water courses, "freeze out" the small own- 

 ers, and keep the greater part of the land idle and valueless. The rainfall 

 in that region is from ten to fifteen inches annually, which amounts to per- 

 petual drought. Engineers and geologists began last year to spend a national 

 appropriation for sinking artesian wells. One experiment was partially 



