12 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



is due much of the credit for the impetus given our 

 more modern methods of artificial crop-watering. It 

 took them two years to get their first canal into work- 

 ing order, and the work was done under the pressure 

 of uncertainty and with many hardships and priva- 

 tions. In 1870 the Greeley Union Colony was estab- 

 lished in Northern Colorado on a barren plain, and an 

 experimental system of ditching was begun in imita- 

 tion of the irrigation fields existing in Utah. It was 

 about this time that the California Arcadians took up 

 the great art of supplying plant food with ' ' the waters 

 led captive," and at once irrigation sprang into new 

 life and came seemingly in the nick of time to redeem 

 America's arid wastes "and make the desert to blos- 

 som as the rose. ' * 



