TEACH AS TO FARMING. 23 



to their elevation and a deficient supply of water. I apprehend, 

 however, that these lands are not to be found in Indiana, nor in 

 any other Prairie State, whose first peculiarities that strike a 

 stranger are a superabundance of water in tin.- rainy season and 

 a scarcity thereof in the dry. The time is at hand when you 

 will here require extensive and powerful pumping apparatus, if 

 only to raise water for your heavy stocks of cattle and convey it to 

 the pastures wherein they will be confined ; and why not raise 

 enough of the grateful fluid to refresh pastures and cattle alike ? 



But even though this assured and ample resource were non- 

 existent, I maintain that water enough foils on your fields every 

 year to keep them fresh and luxuriant through the summer, if it 

 were saved and not wasted. But most of it falls during the 

 seasons when least is wanted, and is suffered to run off to the 

 rivers and the ocean, carrying very much of the best juices of the 

 soil along with it, when it should be retained in ponds and 

 voirs to be pumped into barn-yards or drawn oil' to irrigate the 

 fields during the fervid heats of summer. The apparent difficulty 

 of doing this would vanish and the presumed expense be materi- 

 ally lessened on careful consideration. 



I know not that I have traversed any country with more lively 

 interest than beautiful, bountiful, picturesque Lombardy. The 

 dark pall of Austrian despotism enveloping it did not suffice to 

 dim its natural loveliness and luxuriance, so greatly improved by 

 the labor and genius of Man. It seems to have grown into its 

 system of almost universal irrigation by imperceptible and un- 

 marked degrees, and to be now producing double hur\ ests annually 

 as the result of some fortuitous impulse rather than of foresight 

 and deliberate calculation. The magnificent plain of Upper Italy, 

 which has for so many centuries been the field of combat where 

 Goth and Latin, Frank and Hun, Gaul and German, have struggled 

 for the mastery of Europe, slopes almost imperceptibly from 

 the Alps to the Po, and the impetuous torrents which tear the 

 rocky sides of the snow-crowned precipices are arrested and chas- 

 tened in the blue Lakes which lie at the foot of the mountains, 

 smiling serenely out upon the plain. Thence the waters proceed 



