THE POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION. 81 



thousands of places where a very moderate outlay 

 would have sufficed to dam a stream or brooklet issu- 

 ing from between two spurs of the Blue Ridge, or the 

 Allegheniqs, so that a refreshing current of the copious 

 and fertilizing floods of Winter and Spring, warmed 

 by the fervid suns of June and July, could have been 

 led over broad fields lying below, so as to vanquish 

 drouth and insure generous harvests. Nay; I feel 

 confident that I could in many places have construc- 

 ted rude works in a week, after that drouth began to 

 be felt, that would have saved and made the Corn on 

 at least a portion of the planted acres through which 

 the now shrunken brooks danced and laughed idly 

 down to the larger streams in the wider and equally 

 thirsty valleys. .Qf course, I know that this would 

 have been imperfect irrigation a mere stop-gap 

 that the cold spring- water of a parched Summer can- 

 not fertilize as the hill -wash of Winter and Spring, if 

 thriftily garnered and warmed through and through 

 for sultry weeks, would do ; yet I believe that very 

 many farmers might, even then, have secured partial 

 crops by such irrigation as was still possible, had they, 

 even at the eleventh hour, done their best to retrieve 

 the errors of the past. 



. For the present, I would only counsel every farmer 

 to give his land a careful scrutiny with a view to ir- 

 rigation in the future. No one is obliged to do any 

 faster than his means will justify ; and yet it may be 

 well to have a clear comprehension of all that may 

 ultimately be done to profit, even though much of 

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