82 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



it must long remain un attempted. In many cases, 

 a stream may be dammed for the power which it will 

 afford for two or three months of each year, if it 

 shall appear that this use is quite consistent with its 

 employment to irrigation, when the former alone 

 would not justify the requisite outlay. It is by thus 

 making one expense subserve two quite independent 

 but not inconsistent purposes that success is attained 

 in other pursuits ; and so it may be in farming. 



As yet, each farmer must study his own resources 

 with intent to make the most of them. If a manage- 

 able stream crosses or issues from his land, he must 

 measure its fall thereon, study the lay of the land, 

 and determine whether he can or cannot, at a toler- 

 able cost, make that stream available in the irriga- 

 tion of at least a portion of his growing crops when 

 they shall need water and the skies decline to supply 

 it. On many, I think on most, farms situated among 

 hills, or upon the slopes of mountains, something 

 may be done in this way done at once, and with 

 immediate profit. But this is rudimentary, partial, 

 fragmentary, when compared with the irrigation which 

 yet shall be. I am confident that there are points on 

 the Carson, the Humboldt, the "Weber, the South 

 Platte, the Cache-le-Poudre, and many less noted 

 streams which thrid the central plateau of our conti- 

 nent, where an expenditure of $10,000 to $50,000 

 may be judiciously made in a dam, locks and canals, 

 for the purposes of irrigation and milling combined, 

 with a moral certainty of realizing fifty per cent, an- 



