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IRRIGATION OF ARABLE LANDS. 



CHAPTER f VI. 



IRRIGATION OF ARABLE 



Few of us ever consider that the larger portion of the 

 arable surface of the United States is doomed to com- 

 parative sterility, unless brought under systematic and 

 permanent irrigation. West of the 100th meridian of 

 longitude, almost to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and 

 from our southern to our northern boundary, stretches a 

 vast tract of land, rich in every element of fertility but 

 moisture, and useless for the purposes of agriculture in 

 its present condition. But while the immense tract is 

 arid in its climate, and for all practical purposes it may 

 be said to be absolutely rainless, yet there flows, across or 

 beneath its surface, the water-shed of a vast and intricate 

 range of mountains, snow-clad during a part or the whole 

 of the year, and which divides it into two portions. It 

 needs but to capture this water, and spread it over the 

 surface, to insure abundant and certain harvests. It may 

 surprise a farmer, used to depend upon the changeful 

 seasons of the Eastern part of the country, to learn that 

 upon these arid lands there may be grown luxurious crops 

 of grass, grain or roots, with the greatest certainty ; that 

 in this climate, the farmer who has brought the waters 

 beneath his yoke, has secured literally and naturally the 

 fulfillment of the promise, that seed-time and harvest 

 should never more fail, while he himself enjoys it only 

 in part and accidentally, and occasionally fails completely 

 to realize it. But this is the fact, for drouth and aridity 

 are entirely subjugated by means of irrigation, and are, 

 strangely enough, only sources of anxiety and loss in those 

 districts were rain falls, and the farmer is subject to con- 

 ditions of climate which he can neither foresee nor con- 

 trol. Seed-time and harvest are only sure where irriga- 

 tion is systematically used by the cultivator. 



