5 6 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



in New Mexico. In these, layer upon layer has been added 

 to the sides and bottom of the waterways, until from a grade 

 below the level of the soil they are now raised two or three 

 feet above it. In this region one may see agriculture carried 

 on by methods as primitive as those practiced in Palestine 

 when Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz. 



The Mission Fathers, accompanying and following the Span- 

 ish conquerors, established themselves here and there through- 

 out the Southwest country to the coast. In Southern California, 

 particularly, they surrounded their stations with fields which 

 rivaled in beauty and fertility the farms and private gardens 

 of the grandees of Spain, and this they did simply by the appli- 

 cation of water to the arid plain. These meagre beginnings 

 in irrigation remained unextended for centuries and naturally 

 fell into decay, but in our day there have been constructed ex- 

 tensive systems throughout various valleys of this sunny land 

 which supply to the soil the one element needed to make it 

 abundantly fruitful, and the desert has been converted into a 

 comparative paradise where thousands of acres of lemon and 

 orange orchards blossom and bring forth under as skilful and 

 energetic a cultivation, and with a remuneration in money un- 

 surpassed in any section of the world. 



For our beginnings of Anglo-Saxon irrigation we must 

 go to Utah, whither the Mormons migrated, seeking their 

 promised land. In July, 1849, tne little band halted in Salt 

 Lake Valley, turned the clear waters of a stream afterwards 

 known as City Creek upon the parched and barren soil, and 

 planted their last stock of potatoes in the hope of raising a 

 crop which would save them from starvation. Utah is thus 

 the mother of our modern irrigation industry, but she has 

 taught us also the importance of public control in the division 



