456 IRRIGATION PRACTICE 



conditions and with the knowledge of modern civilization. 

 Irrigation knowledge and inspiration have been drawn 

 by the whole world from the work of the first American 

 irrigation pioneers. 



The far-reaching consequences of this original experi- 

 ment resulted from a combination of conditions not 

 before known in irrigation history. The pioneers settled 

 in the very heart of the arid section at a time when the 

 nearest settlements to the east or to the west were 1,000 

 miles away. Starvation or successful agriculture was the 

 only alternative offered, since a return to civilization was 

 almost impossible to the weary people with worn-out 

 equipment. They were compelled to make irrigation 

 successful. Then, they were wholly unfamiliar with 

 irrigation practices. True, they were men and women of 

 good intelligence and information, and knew the place of 

 irrigation in the world's history; some of them also had 

 probably seen, in their native New England, the occa- 

 sional irrigated meadow; but, they had no real knowledge 

 of irrigation as the central idea of agriculture. They 

 were, therefore, unhampered by traditional irrigation 

 practices, and built from the foundation as their needs 

 and intelligence directed. Moreover, these irrigation 

 pioneers were of the race that had carried onward modern 

 civilization; of a country with huge courage to achieve 

 great tasks, and of a day when new and increasing truth 

 rendered easier the work of man. They founded their irri- 

 gation, therefore, in vision and with modern intelligence. 

 Naturally, under such conditions, the system of irrigation 

 that arose in the heart of the Great American Desert was 

 modern and original in method and application, and be- 

 came a system to which modern man, interested in the 

 conquest of the desert, has since looked for help. 



