THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



about it. Grapes stood this drenching better than 

 almost anything else, but nearly all deciduous fruits 

 were ruined in flavor and keeping qualities; while 

 garden vegetables were sadly cut down in yield and 

 were dry, stringy and limp, instead of crisp and suc- 

 culent. Nearly all attempts to raise grain in this way 

 were dismal and expensive failures; corn grew yellow 

 and mangy, with too many "nubbins; " beans, melons 

 and many other things refused flatly to do anything of 

 value. Many a man pronounced the soil, the country, 

 the climate, the coast, the Occident generally, a fraud, 

 and sighed for the good old stony hills and howling 

 winds of New England, where one could at least raise 

 something fit to eat. 



Meanwhile the soil was injured by this kind of 

 treatment. Where it was open enough to permit it 

 the excessive use of water leached out the nitrates 

 which are such an essential element of fertility 

 Though in some cases this was partly compensated 

 by the fertilizers in the water the general result was 

 to impoverish and render " sour " many soils that 

 were good at the start. In other cases the fine silt 

 carried by the water formed a hard pan very rapidly 

 at the bottom, especially where it contained much 

 iron, or toughened the subsoil already there so as to 

 affect materially the drainage, a very important item. 

 Where the ground was very rich in iron a sheet of 

 slushy clay heavily charged with iron settled on top 

 of the hard pan or bed rock and injured the tender 

 roots, killing some things and injuring others. Even 

 where the drainage was naturally good it was often 

 ruined by the filling up of the ground beneath with 

 water to a point that was too near the roots. W T here 

 there was any hard pan this was easily and quickly 

 done; and even where there was no hard pan, it was 

 often done with quite as much certainty, the only 

 difference being in the time required. 



An instance of this occurred only three years ago, 

 striking in its effects, so easily verified by any one 

 who doubts it, and so valuable as a warning to one 

 who thinks himself a natural irrigator and requires 

 no lesson from any one, that I give it in full. A gentle- 

 man long resident in San Diego, California, a good 

 lawyer and a man of wealth, with all the time and 

 opportunities to travel and inform himself that any 

 one could wish, owned an orange orchard in El Cajon 

 some twelve miles back of San Diego. Land, climate 

 and all other conditions were as good as the best to 

 be found in this State. The trees were eighteen years 

 old at that time. I was at this orchard in the spring 

 with Charles Dudley Warner, who was then writing 

 his book on California. The trees were just in bloom, 

 the very time when great care should be taken with 

 oranges about using too much water. The water 

 stood around the trees in great vats ten or twelve feet 

 square, and in many places at the lower sides fully a 



foot and a half deep. So absurd was it that Mr. 

 Warner noticed it at once, although irrigation was 

 entirely new to him. Consequence number one: 

 The trees had shed over one-half of their bloom, 

 which lay like snow on the ground and water. 



At the upper end of the orchard we found rows of 

 these vats in all sorts of conditions. Some were a 

 mess of slime that would mellow the soul of an old 

 sow. Some were dried down to a point that would 

 have made a good business basis for a brick yard. 

 Some were beginning to crack into flakes just thick 

 enough for prime adobes. But into all of them 

 immediate preparations were in progress to turn in 

 more water. , 



In the fall I saw the orchard again. Six or seven 

 of the largest trees were dead. Dozens more looked 

 yellow and measly. The crop was very light ; the 

 oranges were small and looked tired. After careful 

 culling and selecting, the owner got two carloads of 

 fruit that he thought fit for market. He should have 

 had ten from an orchard of that size. He sent them 

 to Chicago, where oranges were bringing a high 

 price. Two months later he showed a few favored 

 friends a draft. It was for $65, to cover the loss of 

 the consignee on the shipment. The same year 

 orchards of the same age and same kind of trees, with 

 conditions, soil and all else not a particle better, paid 

 nine hundred and a thousand dollars an acre net 

 profit. 



For eighteen years this man had been spending 

 money on this place and made it one of the handsom- 

 est in the country. It had been watered from a well 

 at the lower end, from which the water was pumped 

 by steam engine to a reservoir at the upper end, some 

 sixty feet higher. The total water supply had been 

 less than two miner's inches, enough to make a 

 pretty place, but not enough for profit. So long as 

 this well was the source of supply the place was well- 

 drained. But in the year I speak of he began using 

 water from the San Diego river flume, which ran 

 along the hills above him. He made a contract 

 which, he thought, called for seventeen inches of 

 water. The Supreme Court, afterwards, thought 

 otherwise, and cut it down to the two and a half 

 inches that he intended the company to understand 

 by his language when he drew the contract. But in 

 the meantime he started in to get the worth of his 

 money out of it, and used all he could get. This 

 would have been too much, even had the place had 

 the most perfect drainage. It was naturally a well 

 drained place, with a slope of some sixty feet from 

 the upper to the lower end. It was not underlaid 

 with boulders or gravel, but had rotten granite below 

 several feet of fine, rich soil. By fall the water in 

 the well, that was over twenty feet below the surface 

 when the well was dug, was almost at the surface, 



