in SOME CONTKASTS 33 



American peoples struggled against drought by 

 irrigation on the big scale. Those people are dead 

 and gone ages ago, but they ma.de their canals so 

 wisely that when the Eeclamation Service of the 

 United States began to try to bring water to these 

 desert lands, they sometimes simply followed the 

 lines of those ancient canals. They had no iron 

 and no steel, those ancient peoples ; their imple- 

 ments were all of stone. They had no elaborate 

 surveying instruments such as our engineers have ; 

 they had no blasting powder to help them to cut 

 through the rocks, and yet they managed to make 

 such wonderful canals that the modern engineer 

 sometimes finds it best just to follow the line so 

 marked out. 



Not all the Indians were so clever, however ; 

 some of them had to be content with simpler ways 

 of food-growing than that of elaborate schemes of 

 irrigation. One group that we know of " scoured 

 the Sonoran plains for chance water-holes, as well 

 as more permanent waters, carrying religiously 

 hoarded seeds ; they chased rainstorms seen from 

 commanding peaks for scores if not hundreds of 

 miles ; and wherever they found standing or 

 running water, or even damp soil, they planted 

 their seeds, guarded and cultivated the growing 

 plants with infinite patience, and after carefully 

 harvesting the crop, planted some of the finest 



D 



