SECOND DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 239 



Experience and reading has taught every intelligent man in the 

 State this. 



We have seen Egypt, China, Peru, Utah, and other countries 

 reclaimed from the desert hy this simple means. Where irrigation 

 has been practiced in this State it has satisfied the demands of the 

 most exacting. In Utah, the reclaimed desert, Brigham Young fre- 

 quently raised as high as ninety bushels of wheat to the acre on 

 portions of his irrigated land. With irrigation the "West Side" 

 would easily produce an average of forty-five bushels per acre per 

 annum with almost unvarying certainty. Giardens and vineyards 

 and orchards and populous villages and cities would render it one 

 of the most prosperous sections of the State. 



As it is, failure after failure of crops have almost disheartened the 

 farmers of that section of our State. They are now investigating and 

 considering the advisability of bringing gunpowder to their aid, of 

 establishing cannon stations from which to throw shell and ball into 

 the passing and almost bursting rain-laden clouds, which need but 

 slight concussion to force them to disgorge their moisture. Our 

 brothers of the West Side are becoming discouraged — they are grow- 

 ing desperate. Settling on lands which, when there is sufficient rain, 

 produce immense crops, they have year after year invested their 

 scanty means, and watched with strained eye and aching heart the 

 passage of some moisture-bearing cloud. Disappointment has fol- 

 lowed disappointment until these, our friends, are almost driven 

 either to desert their farms, or implore the aid of capital in the con- 

 struction of irrigating canals and ditches sufficient to water the 

 thirsty soil. It might cost a couple of millions of dollars to furnish 

 the needed dams, reservoirs, canals, and ditches. It seems_ a large 

 undertaking, but compared to any of the works of antiquity, it is 

 insignificant. In ancient and almost savage Peru the Incas, for the 

 irrigation of their fields, brought 



WATER FROM RESERVOIRS 



Several hundreds of miles; the aqueducts passed along the precipi- 

 tous cliffs of the Andes, wound around the termination of the moun- 

 tains, and in many places penetrated their solid sides through tunnels 

 hewn without the aid of iron, crossed immense chasms upon Avails 

 of solid masonry; the conducts were of large slabs of freestone, 

 closely joined without cement. 



The dams to be constructed are but mud barriers when compared 

 to those of Arabia, Egypt, and Aleconte in Spain. 



But while small when compared with the works of antiquity, the 

 work has been too great and expensive to enlist private capital ._ That 

 it must soon become a work of necessity to construct an irrigating sys- 

 tem for the West Side I firmly believe. Many farmers, discouraged 

 beyond endurance, have left our State for Oregon and Washington 

 Territory. More are leaving. How to check emigration and induce 

 immigration will soon become a State problem. 



Could capitalists be assured of a safe investment and a certain and 

 profitable return, they would construct a system of canals sufficient 

 to irrigate hundreds of thousands, if not millions of acres; a guaran- 

 tee would have to be made them. They would not be willing to rely 

 upon the sale of water only during clry years. There must be an 

 assurance of a certain rate per acre per annum. I feel certain that 



