256 PRACTICAL FORESTRY 
dependent upon irrigation for the luxuriance of their 
vegetation. Nothing is of more vital importance to 
this district than water, which comes from the slopes 
of neighboring hills and mountains. It is, as is often 
said, ‘‘ water not land that measures production.” 
In the Southwestern United States, in Arizona 
and New Mexico, there is a group of reservations of 
recent formation, the most interesting of which in- 
cludes the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. 
This will become in time, no doubt, a National park. 
The Canyon which has been formed by the erosive 
action of the Colorado River is one of the most stu- 
pendous natural wonders of the world. It is 250 
miles long and from 3,000 to 5,000 feet deep. Its 
walls have been terraced and carved by the action of 
water into pinnacles and towers of many shapes, the 
beauty of which is enhanced by a great variety. of 
brilliant colors due to the different stratifications 
through which the river has cut its way. In reaching 
this district from almost any direction one passes 
through vast deserts or sandy plateaus interspersed 
with salt lakes and alkali tracts with little vegetation. 
Arizona is the land of deserts, with a hot climate, 
with beautiful and peculiar scenery, with petrified for- 
ests, with rich mines and with curious Indian tribes 
and cliff dwellings, but with little of the most im- 
portant of all substances, wood and water. 
