260 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



of lime in them. The function of carbonate of lime is 

 well described by a writer signing himself "Robert John- 

 son" in "Hoard's Dairyman." His article follows : 



"Out in Idaho is a very wide desert plain. For unnumbered thou- 

 sands of years it has borne only stunted sage brush, tufts of scat- 

 tered grass, coyotes and jack rabbits. Far below the plain, in a 

 ragged rock hewn canyon, flowed Snake River. The desert plain 

 was silent, untenanted save in winter time when snow made it 

 possible for sheep and cattle to come out upon it and nibble the 

 bunch grass. Men could not come there to live because no man alone ' 

 nor neighborhood of men could dam mighty Snake River and take 

 out its water, life giving though all men knew that water to be. The 

 desert waited. Day came at last when one man crept down the preci- 

 pices that walled in the river and in a tiny widening of the canyon he 

 found a rift of soil and above it a spring. He stayed there to plant 

 that soil and the alfalfa, peaches, apples, prunes thereof were splen- 

 did. Then this man came from his hidden oasis and told other men 

 with gold and venturous blood of the land of silence, the wide 

 plain, the prisoned river. Returning the men of gold came with 

 him and together they traveled far over the silent land. Next 

 came the engineers squinting long through shining instrument of 

 brass, next armies of men with herds of horses ; roads were made, 

 villages of tents and board shacks sprung up, canals were dug 

 across the plain, canals large enough to float any Atlantic steam- 

 ship, lacking only in depth. Other armies of men pushed out 

 perilously on the glassy rocks at the brink of waterfalls and with 

 cement made piers and bridges and then with gates let down, the 

 astonished river found itself trapped, dammed, made to flow away 

 from its canyon into new canals. Content it crept their winding 

 lengths, it penetrated quietly every lateral, every ditch ; it spread 

 itself out smiling over the land in tiny furrows. Thus was a river 

 lost and came to be only moisture of an irrigated plain so wide that 

 no man could see across it. 



"Thus was regained Paradise, land of orchards and meadows. 

 Then came men from many lands, men with plows and harrows, 

 with hoes and shovels, men driving rumbling wagons, building tiny 

 houses of boards, bringing women and many children, planting 

 trees of poplar, apple and peach. Thus was tamed and made into 

 farms and orchards and gardens the mighty desert, wild and drouth 



