THE IEBIOATION AGE. 



81 



if you crowd on more water it may disarrange all your 

 other streams. In any event, it is such a nuisance 

 that it will pay you to insure a uniform flow of every 

 furrow by careful grading at the start. 



For the same reason all weeds, dead grass, sticks 

 and other rubbish should be removed from the ground 

 as far as is consistent with reasonable economy. The 

 harrow and hay rake used often enough will do it. You 

 must bear in mind the difference between raising a few 

 things for home use and raising them on a large scale 

 for market. Thus a patch of blackberries at the end 

 of a field to take the waste water may be a great suc- 

 cess for your table, no matter how badly irrigated so 

 long as they have water enough. But to run a large 

 patch for market that way would often mean light 

 profit and possibly none. You cannot always see these 

 things at once or believe that such trifles can count. 

 But the years tell a different tale to a grower who keeps 

 close account of every cent as many do. It may seem 

 silly to talk of combing the ground free of trash and 

 worry over an inch of rise in a furrow. But when you 

 see the work done by a long fine thread of water so fine 

 that the camera can give no idea of it with the best 

 light you can pick, and see two hundred or more of these 

 winding over a ten-acre tract while the owner is snoring 

 serenely in the hammock, you will conclude that you can 



Everything in the way of a picture must be taken so 

 that the average city Jake not only can but must com- 

 prehend it at a glance. If a picture were taken show- 

 ing the thin ribbons of water as they actually run the 

 aforesaid Jake, who nowadays is more ignorant than the 

 "country Jake" of a few years ago, would think it a 

 mere picture of an orchard, for very little of the water 

 would show. To reach the profundity of his cranium, 

 the picturg must show plenty of light on the water, 

 and this requires a rush of it. Consequently every at- 

 tempt to show furrow irrigation is taken f rom*the worst 

 specimens, cutting and tearing the ground in all di- 

 rections, eddying here and building bars there, washing 

 out the feeding ditch at the head of the furrow, and 

 making puddles everywhere. Most men of sense, who 

 had never seen good work done, would naturally say 

 "If this is irrigation, I will take rain." 



PAYETTE AND THE PAYETTE VALLEY, IDAHO. 



The Home of the Jonothan Apple One of the Garden 

 Spots of the Northwest. 



BY J. A. HARADER. 



Did you ever take a run out to the Pacific Coast over 

 the Union Pacific and the Oregon Short Line Railroads? 



TWO OF THE PARTY TAKE A BOAT RIDE. 

 There Are Several Nice Lakes for Boating and Fishing on the Site of Keystone Colony, Fed by Spring Streams From the Hills. 



take considerable trouble at the start to secure such ease 

 and certainty of results later on. 



I am sorry that I cannot get satisfactory pictures 

 of fine irrigation. All that I have ever been able to take 

 myself and all I have seen by others are abominable. A 

 picture of checks shows nothing of value if full of vege- 

 tation. If bare, then an inch or two of water in the 

 best-made checks with a man on the levee between 

 them at a hundred feet from the camera will remind one 

 of the old hymn: 



"Lo, on a narrow neck of land 

 Twixt two unbounded seas I stand." 



One who has never seen the real thing quite natur- 

 ally thinks it needs a whole river to irrigate a decent 

 farm. 



Photographs of furrow irrigation are still worse. 



If you have not, you have yet to experience the greatest 

 contrast and intermingling of dreary, desolate and un- 

 welcome desert with the brightest, richest and most beau- 

 tiful valleys that our whole country offers. If you have 

 made this trip, you will perhaps remember of passing 

 through a pretty little city, out in Idaho, on the main line 

 of the Oregon Short Line Railway called Payette, situated 

 at the junction of the picturesque Payette River and the 

 silent Snake. If you did not stop off at this point, you 

 perhaps little dreamed of the beautiful valley lying up the 

 Payette River, nestled securely among the low foot hills 

 of the Rockies, with this sparkling mountain stream cours- 

 ing through its center and giving, through a vast system of 

 irrigating ditches, abundant, luxurious life to everything 

 within its borders, while far out and beyond stretched the 

 expansive desert of sage brush and monotony and gloom. 

 It is here that irrigation is king, every home a castle 

 and every tiller of the soil a prince. It is to this valley 

 that industrious and enterprising people from the East and 

 Middle West are coming to settle down and live amidst 



