MOKE OF IKKIGATION. 275 



any favorable point above their junction, raising the 

 surface of the stream six feet, at a cost not exceed- 

 ing $10,000, would suffice to irrigate completely not 

 less than fifty square miles of the valley below it, 

 while serving at the same time to furnish power for 

 mills and factories to a very considerable extent ; for 

 the need of Irrigation is not incessant, but generally 

 confined to two or three months per annum, and all of 

 the volume of the stream not needed for Irrigation 

 could be utilized as power. Thus the valleys of the 

 few constant water-courses of the Plains may come 

 at an early day to employ and subsist a dense and 

 energetic population, engaged in the successful prose- 

 cution alike of agriculture and manufactures, while 

 belts, groves, and forests, of choice, luxuriant timber, 

 will diversify* and embellish regions now bare of 

 trees, and but thinly covered with dead herbage from 

 June until the following April. 



But, when we rise above the bluffs, and look off 

 across the blank, bleak areas where no living water 

 exists, the problem becomes more difficult, and its 

 solution will doubtless be much longer postponed. 

 To a stranger, these bleak uplands seem sterile ; and, 

 though such is not generally the fact, the presump- 

 tion will repel experiments which involve a large 

 initial outlay. The railroad companies, which now 

 own large tracts of these lands, will be obliged 

 either to demonstrate their value, or to incite indi- 

 viduals and colonists to do it by liberal concessions. 

 As the case stands to-day, most of these lands, which 



