THE NEW SOIL IRRIGATION. 55 



pied, and that ruin would then overtake us because of the dis- 

 proportionate growth of our cities. To-day there is presented 

 to us the spectacle of a cultivable empire of 100,000,000 acres, 

 and if we add the "dry farming" area which will become avail- 

 able when the art is only a little farther advanced, we have 

 a farming domain still remaining not only greater in extent 

 than all the farms which were under cultivation at the time 

 the prophets uttered their dark sayings twenty years ago, but 

 greater than all the lands actually under cultivation in the 

 United States at the present time. 



Thousands of acres of this new soil are now available, and 

 millions of acres will become so as the vast systems of irriga- 

 tion are completed which are now under way or are yet to be 

 undertaken in the different quarters of the country, more par- 

 ticularly the West and Southwest. These sections deserve our 

 consideration if for no other reason than that of their vast 

 extent ; but more particularly because they are evolving a ma- 

 terial wealth and a social development of which no man who 

 wishes to keep himself informed of his country's progress can 

 afford to remain ignorant. 



In the southern borders of Colorado and Utah, in northern 

 New Mexico and along the Salt River Valley of Arizona may 

 still be seen the remains of irrigating works built by a civ- 

 ilization which centuries ago perished from the earth. He 

 who visits the Pueblo Indians, either from curiosity or for 

 some definite purpose, will find them irrigating their little 

 patches of tillage just as their ancestors were doing at the 

 time the first Spanish explorers passed through their country. 

 The waters of the Rio Grande are laden with sediment, and 

 this fact accounts for the hundreds of years of continuous 

 service that have been rendered by certain old irrigating ditches 



