THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



67 



water is either warm or muddy, and generally both, 

 and the ground is so warm and fertilized by its use 

 that the results of even this defective work are often 

 greater than those of the richest soil where the de- 

 pendence is on the rainfall direct. The ground is 

 never touched with a plow or anything that could 

 break its surface, yet the fruit hangs quite plenty on 

 the trees, and much of it is of fair size. Weeds and 

 grass grow all through it as they did in the ages past, 

 yet the flavor of the fruit is pretty good. The success 

 only goes to prove what a great success it might be if 

 the water were properly handled. 



On a larger scale we see the same work and often 

 with remarkable results Near Lerdo in the State of 

 Durango are many thousands of acres producing 

 heavy crops of corn and cotton. Fields of one hun- 

 dred acres and often more lying nearly flat are flood- 

 ed from a large ditch at the upper side from which 

 the water is allowed to flow from many openings. It 

 crawls and spreads over the field in a thousand little 

 sloughs, bayous, lagoons and ponds covering perhaps 

 two-thirds of the whole surface, and often more. The 

 rest of the ground gets wet by seepage from the wet 

 portion as best it can. All the stirring the soil ever 

 gets from century to century is a furrow made in the 

 spring with a wooden plow. This is a round log 

 sharpened at one end and dragged by an ox or two 

 and runs just deep enough to turn over enough dirt 

 to cover the seed which is planted on the hard, smooth 

 bottom the log has left. I saw crops there of corn 

 that would easily average fifty bushels, but it proved 

 only that a hundred could have been raised. I have 

 seen a hundred and ten in California with less water 

 and more work on soil in every way inferior. 



The success, such as it is, attained by these 

 methods, which prevail all over Mexico as far as I 

 have seen, is due to the great fertility of the soil, the 

 warmth of the ground and water and a favorable 

 texture in the soil. On heavy clays it would be 

 almost a failure and on soils too porous, through 

 which the water could easily drop without spreading 

 sideways, it would also be quite inefficient on account 

 of the dry parts failing to take up enough water. And 

 under the best conditions the success reached is so 

 far behind what it could be that it can be used only 

 as an example of error. The very best orchards are 

 like the eastern apple orchard referred to in the first 

 chapter, very fine to one who had never seen anything 

 better, but nowhere beside the fine work of skillful 

 irrigators in the Western United States. 



In California when the great American came to the 

 front some of the new masters of the land fell at once 

 into the old Indian methods of irrigation, while others 

 started to shpw them how the thing should be done. 

 Most of them concluded that they would at least 

 straighten the track in which the water was to run 

 and would also plow the ground before planting so as 



to give the water a chance to soak in. Which the 

 same was all very fine as far as it went. But there 

 they stopped. 



The American thought if a little water was good, 

 more must be better, and into the furrow he turned 

 water enough to fill it and retired to the shade to roll 

 a cigarette. The water generally went tearing down 

 the furrow, cutting away the finer parts of the soil 

 here, breaking out of the furrow there, and occasion- 

 ally making a fine pond in which the sediment was 

 perhaps deposited. The stream ran muddy with 

 velocity from excess of water and puddled the sides 

 of the furrow in a few minutes with a fine paste that 

 prevented much of the soaking the soil needed. 

 When done the whole was a series of small swamps 

 and dry ridges. The wet parts were mere sheets of 

 paste a few inches thick. Where the soil was sandy 

 enough to permit soaking to any depth the water gen- 

 erally dropped through the bottom of the furrow and 

 went straight down without spreading much on the 

 sides, so that the irrigated portions of the patch were 

 only the parts actually covered by the water and a few 

 inches around the margins. 



Under the clear bright sun of the long summer the 

 ground soon began to bake. The second or third day 

 the fine sheet of clay the water had made on the sur- 

 face by leaching out the finer particles of the soil 

 began to shine and crack in all directions except 

 where it should have cracked, which was around the 

 stalk. Just where the ground around young and 

 tender plants needs aerating the most, around the stem, 

 it formed an impenetrable shield, and where the stuff 

 was young enough it lifted much of it out of the 

 ground as neatly as if that had been the object of ir- 

 rigating. 



The American looked at it and swore, but with true 

 Yankee ingenuity he arose to the occasion. He 

 poured on more water. 



Some may think this was from laziness. In some 

 cases that would have been a sufficient reason, as it is 

 in many cases to-day. But the plain fact remains 

 that in most cases it was the only remedy he thought 

 of. The idea of loosening up that top soil with any 

 kind of an instrument to form a mulch to retain the 

 moisture, and admit the air into the soil, never en- 

 tered his head any more than it did that of the man 

 who used the same stream a hundred years before, 

 and people will begin irrigation to-day and continue 

 it on exactly the same lines if their ignorance only 

 has half a chance. 



In no case was more than one stream between two 

 rows of anything thought of in the early days of Cali- 

 fornia. A furrow was made on one side of a row of 

 trees which was left there from year to year and in 

 most cases never broken up. Then there was no 

 furrow until you reached the next tree. The whole 

 intermediate space was a mass of weeds, grass, mus- 



