ii RECLAIMING THE DESERT 21 



trees shall drop oranges more golden than the stripes 

 on the back of your friend the lizard, thicker on the 

 trees than the ugly spines on your body. My 

 peach trees shall be weighed down with their 

 weight of fruit. The Indians, who are struggling 

 desperately to grow a few grains of maize round 

 the damp places in the sand, will flock to help me 

 to bring in my harvest. Dates shall grow on my 

 land as they never grew in Egypt ; grapes as they 

 never grew in Spain ; there shall be acres of 

 melons and pumpkins, even the humble cabbage 

 will grow so as to give me five crops in the year." 

 Something of this kind he would say to us if he 

 were not too busy building his house and getting 

 his seeds and his implements to say much at all. 

 It is at least what might be said for him. 



But, some one will perhaps say, this is not our 

 prosaic earth, this is the Garden of Eden. Peaches, 

 oranges, grapes, dates, almonds, melons, growing as 

 we never imagined they could grow why does 

 not the whole world go out to Arizona to sit in 

 peace and comfort beneath its own vine and fig 

 tree ? Well, like most things, it is not so simple 

 as it seems. So far from simple is it that the 

 United States Government does its best to dis- 

 courage people going out to those distant lands 

 unless they have both capital and skill. Capital, 

 that means the power to wait, the power which 



