i88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tlicy are four times as densely i^opulated as is the United States; and 

 while we deem the Chinee so undesirable that we exclude him from 

 our shores, all authorities agree that his race is superior to that of 

 the Malays, Tagals, and jSl^egritos who inhabit the Philippines. 



The irrigable area is much larger than the States of New York, 

 Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts combined. Those States 

 at the present time are supporting a population of over seventeen 

 millions, and many authorities claim that they will in the future 

 support at least fifty millions. The regions of scanty rainfall that 

 can be irrigated are fairly crusted with potash and other soluble 

 mineral ingredients that nourish plant life, and give to the valleys 

 already irrigated their astonishing fertility. This enables the 

 farmers to support themselves on such small areas that the life is 

 almost a communal one. The irrigated West can sustain a popula- 

 tion as gi'eat as that sustained on an equal area in the East, or even 

 greater.* For years that dry climate has been a health restorer to 

 the sojourner there. This is not claimed for the Philippine Islands. 

 The building up of this Western empire with its canals and irrigating 

 ditches, its railroads and cities, will absorb a vast amount of capital, 

 and it is a natural and easy line of development for us. Mr. Irwin 

 has said, " To capital seeking investment in a large Avay, irrigation 

 enterprises in the West offer a most solid, lucrative, and tempting 

 field." f Secretary Noble has said, " No one can now compute the 

 money value that will concentrate in these reservoirs and canals and 

 ditches, carrying water to the fields of the husbandman, and upon 

 which the people must depend for their prosperity." :j: 



Five centuries ago large parts of eastern and western England 

 were impenetrable morasses. These have entirely disappeared be- 

 fore the skill of the engineer. 



N. S. Shaler says, " The total area of the inundated lands of 

 the United States probably exceeds 115,000 square miles, counting 

 only those flooded areas which are at present unsuited by their ex- 

 cessive humidity for agricultural use, but which may be won to 

 the service by engineering devices such as have been applied in the 

 regions occupied by older civilizations." * This is more than 73,- 

 000,000 acres of drainable swamps and marshes. Lands more easy 

 of access have, in the past, so occupied our attention that these low- 

 lands have thus far been almost entirely neglected. They are located 



* If we accept the reclaimable area given above as approximately correct, and apply a 

 system of irrip;ation, it can be cultivated, "and made the happy home of an industrious 

 people more than equaling in number the inhabitants of the United Kingdom of Great 

 Britain and Ireland." — -/. N. Irwin, in Forum, vol. i, p. 7Jj.2. 



f Forum, vol. xii, p. 750. 



\ Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1891. 



* The United States of America, vol. i, p. 382. 



