62 1HE IRRIGATION AGE. 



erywhere are to be found the traces of ancient civilization to a very 

 high degree, and evidences of hasty flight as well as the ravages of 

 fire; the salient features of every pillage. 



In Arizona are to be found traces of prehistoric canals, which with 

 their laterals must exceed a thousand miles in length; and the ruins 

 of many of them give evidence of the expenditure of vast labor in their 

 construction. One of the largest of these canals took the water from 

 the south side of the Salt River, about twenty -five miles from the pres- 

 ent city of Phosnix, and after leaving the river runs for several miles 

 through a formation of hard volcanic rocks. Thus without explosives 

 of any kind, and with the simple tools of the stone age, the aboriginal 

 constructors of the ditch excavated a canal through solid rock of the 

 hardest formation, to a depth varying from twenty to thirty feet, and 

 to a width of about twenty feet; and with the ordinary amount of 

 water in the river, having a capacity of from ten thousand to fifteen 

 thousand miners' inches. The evidence of the vast amount of labor 

 for its construction by the chipping process, which gradually wore 

 away the rock through which the canal passes, is very plain upon the 

 face of the rock itself; while also for miles on both sides of the canal 

 can be found enormous numbers of wornout stone hammers and axes. 

 Convinced by the ruins of the ditch of the possibility of irrigating the 

 surrounding country, within the last few years the work of cleaning 

 out the debris and timber from the ditch that centuries of neglect 

 had caused to accumulate, was commenced by a party of settlers. 

 And so successfully was this work carried forward that at present, 

 through the presence of the ruined canal, a population of twenty thou- 

 sand inhabit a tract of land that, previous to its restoration, was but a 

 barren waste covered by sagebrush, grease wood and cacti. The canal 

 is at present known as the Mesa Canal, and supplies Mesa and vicinity 

 with water for irrigation and other purposes. Two miles east of the 

 above mentioned canal, but on the other side of the river, is the head 

 of the Arizona Canal. This is the largest in the southwest, if not on 

 the Pacific coast, carrying as it does nearly fifteen thousand inches of 

 water. The construction of this canal was also suggested by the re- 

 mains of a prehistoric canal that could be traced for many miles, and 

 the promoter of the new enterprise, in the firm belief that what had 

 been done could be done again under like conditions, had the pleasure 

 of seeing a canal completed which reclaimed over one hundred thou- 

 sand acres in and around the city of Phosnix. Forty miles west of the 

 Arizona Canal, and a few miles below the junction of the Salt River 

 with the Gila, and on the north bank of the latter river, is the head of 

 another prehistoric ditch, which from the traces found along its 

 banks, is of even more interest. It is called the "Acequa of the Paint- 

 ed Rocks," and commences where it can take from the Gila not enly 



