fio March, 1909.] Irrigatio)i in hlastcru Spain. 177 



high esteem m which tlie Spaniards hold them is not misplaced. He very 

 kindly supplied me with literature on the subject from which I have made 

 a few quotations. In his Third Biennial Report (1895-6) to the Governor 

 of the State of Wyoming Mr. Mead, then Engineer for that State, writes 

 as follows : — 



The European country which most nearly resembles ours (State of Wyoming) 

 is Spain. Its rainfall is less than that of Wyoming, hence irrigation is indispensable. 

 Spain is also the country which best repays study, since its code of water laws is 

 both the most concise and the most complete of any country in the world where 

 irrigation is largely practised. 



These laws are the outcome of the experience of a thousand years in which local 

 laws and customs, widely different in character, have operated side by side in the 

 same province.* 



The most impressive of these lessons, both to Spain and to the people of this 

 country, is afforded by the experience of the province of Valencia. The plain near 

 the city of that name is one of the oldest and most celebrated irrigation districts 



in Spain The prosperity of its people and the success of its institutions 



-have been admired and commended by every writer, and all agree that thev rest on 

 the inseparability of land and water. 



Mr. Mead deals at length with the relations existing between land 

 and water. He contrasts the prosperity of Valencia, where the water is 

 attached to the land, with the less satisfactory conditions at Elche and 

 several irrigation areas further south, where the water is owned separately 

 and .sold to land-holders. 



From Irrigation Development, a standard work by Mr. Wm. Ham 

 Hall, State Engineer for California, the following quotations relating to 

 Spanish irrigation are of interest. Speaking of Valencia on page 383 

 he say.s— • 



The Huerta or garden plain of the city of Valencia constitutes one of the 

 oldest and, justly, most celebrated irrigation districts of Spain. Its works date 

 from the time of the Moors; its water rights are founded on custom which antidates 

 existing property records in the country ; and its irrigation practice and regulation 

 are the outgrowth of centuries of experience unfettered by regulative laws or 

 administrative action other than those local and self imposed by the irrigators. . . . 



The Huerta of Valencia is on a plain 7 to 9 miles in width, gently sloping 

 from the foot of the Sierra Molino Mountains to the sea on the eastern coast of 

 Spain. This garden plain comprises about 26,350 acres of irrigated land, supplied 

 by the waters of the Turia River, through eight main canals and their distributaries ; 

 and in the midst stands the city of Valencia. The property is for the most part 

 minutely subdivided in ownership, and is held by peasant proprietors or the 

 hereditary tenants of wealthy owners. 



" The population of the whole province of Valencia is 120 per square mile, but in 

 the irrigated portions it is vastly more, and in the 26,000 acres watered by the eight 

 canals of the Turia there are 62 villages containing a population of not less than 

 72,209 souls; that is, at the rate of 1.774 per square mile; and this includes no part 

 of the city of Valencia." — (MoncriefT, p. 128.) 



The Turia is a torrential river with a width of 200 to 400 feet through the plain, 

 over a shifting bottom, and with a much less width, over a cobble and gravel bed, 

 where it emerges from the foothills of the mountain. Its floods, rising 15 to 20 

 feet, were at one time a devastating agent to the city and its surroundings, but 

 levees now keep these waters to their proper course. Its low water discharge is 250 

 to 350 cubic feet per second, which is all taken up by the canuls for irrigation. 



The eight canal headworks are placed four on each side of the river, alternating 

 and not opposite to each other, about equidistant apart, and within a length of 

 3.2 miles of the river channel ; the highest being 5 miles from the city and the 

 lowest 2 miles distant. 



*01d irrigated Spain, therefore, never was subjected to feudal rulers; and as 

 a consequence, we find there no great water holdings, like in Italy, oppressing the 

 people and resulting in monopoly of land, but, on the contrary, we find the waters 

 attached to the lands, the lands held in small parcels, and the people an independent 

 peasantry. — (Hall's Irrigation Develofment, page 366.) 



