6 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI STUDIES [154 



regions receive most; the foot-hills less; the mesas receive 

 some from every shower ; the plains for five or six miles get 

 a portion of the larger showers; but beyond that for several 

 hundred miles good rains are very few. The summer 

 of 1906 was exceptional,* for even the plains about Boulder 

 seemed to receive more water than do many parts of the 

 eastern United States in midsummer. When I left Boulder 

 the third of September, the native vegetation for five or six 

 miles out on the plain was as green as a prevailingly gray 

 vegetation well can be; there was no sign of drouth, while 

 when I reached Missouri and Iowa, the pastures were parched. 



In fact what I shall remember most about Colorado is its 

 exuberance of water. It courses down all the mountain 

 canons, roaring and bubbling and dashing into foam. Springs 

 are frequent and of a pureness and coolness that make them 

 perfect. On the plains everywhere that one goes, a ditch full 

 to the brim runs beside one. From the top of Green Mountain 

 a hundred lakes may be seen gleaming on the plain. It is 

 plainly a land of abundant rain and water. 



And yet why this feverish haste to irrigate the fields, why 

 these ditches, these sluices, these storage-reservoirs? Why 

 is land with a water-right worth several hundred dollars an 

 acre, and land without one but five dollars ? And why, to ask 

 a still deeper question, why does nearly every kind of native 

 plant have some means of conserving water, or some contriv- 

 ance for preventing too rapid transpiration? Why do desert 

 plants meet one at every hand: cacti, yuccae, sages, and 

 xerophytic grasses? No, this region cannot be a land of 

 abundant rain and water, in spite of the fact that I have never 



*In 1906 the greatest rainfall was recorded (26.17 inches), while 1901 

 was the driest year (13.67 inches). 



