THE BEST SYSTEM OF IRRIGATION. 



to 



Irrigation is by no means a modern method of applying water to 

 land. A writer on the subject tells us that ''in the regions regarded by 

 general tradition as the cradle of the human race, we find traces of canals 

 evidently constructed for this purpose at a period long preceding the ages 

 of which we have any written memorials. There are in ancient Armenia 

 extensive districts which were already abandoned to desolation at the 

 earliest historical epoch, but which in a yet remoter antiquity had been 

 irrigated by a complicated and highly artificial system of canals, the 

 lines of which can still be followed ; and there are in all the highlands, 

 where the sources of the Uphrates rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India and 

 in China, works of this sort which must have been in existence before 

 man had begun to record his own annals." So says the author of " Man 

 and Nature." Various methods have been employed for artificially 

 applying water to land, some of which appear very primitive and labori- 

 ous to us of to-day. We read of the " creaking of the water wheels " 

 during the whole night on the Nile in irrigating season, " while the 

 poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple shadoof, or backet and 

 sweep, laboriously raising the water from trough to trough by as many as 

 six or seven stages, when the river is low. Instances of other rude meth- 

 ods are known, such as carrying water by means of pots and distributing 

 it on plats of ground." 



These ''systems" would not be calculated to awaken great enthusiasm 

 at the present time in the " noble art of irrigation " if they had to be 

 adopted from necessity. But the plans now in use in the United States 

 are mostly copied or borrowed from the improved methods of the Old 

 World. Practically, the history of irrigation in the United States, as 

 Commissioner Coleman^says, " begins with the construction of the Pacific 

 railroads." But even with thousands of miles of canals, and rapid 

 development within this brief period, it is safe to say that we have 

 scarcely made a beginning. Hence it is too early to assert what may yet 

 be accomplished, or what may prove the " best " system of irrigation. 



