262 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



a smaller cost than the residue. The location of 

 Union Colony may be taken as a fair illustration of 

 the process, and the facilities therefor afforded by 

 nature. 



Among the streams which, taking rise in the east- 

 ern gorges of the Rocky Mountains, run into the 

 South Platte, the most considerable has somehow ac- 

 quired the French name of Cache la Poudre. It 

 heads in and about Long's Peak, and, after emerging 

 from the mountains, runs some 20 to 25 miles nearly 

 due east, with a descent in that distance of about 100 

 feet. Its waters are very low in Autumn and Winter, 

 and highest in May, June and July, from the melt- 

 ing of snow and ice on the lofty mountains which feed 

 it. Like all the streams of this region, it is broad 

 and shallow, with its bed but three to four feet below 

 the plains on either side. 



Greeley, the nucleus of Union Colony, is located 

 at the crossing of the Cache la Poudre by the Denver- 

 Pacific Railroad, about midway of its course from 

 the Kansas Pacific at Denver northward to the 

 Union Pacific at Cheyenne. Here a village of some 

 400 to 500 houses has suddenly grown up during the 

 past Summer. 



The first irrigating canal of Union Colony leaves 

 the Cache la Poudre six or eight miles above Greeley, 

 on the south side, and is carried gradually further and 

 further from the stream until it is fully a mile distant 

 at the village, whence it is continued to the Platte. 

 Branches or ditches lead thence northward, conveying 



