62 THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST 



the foot of the steep cliffs of the range. It has not 

 been possible to cultivate the land far from the moun- 

 tains. At Chamical a trench that was made to convey 

 water to the railway dried up. All that can be done 

 is to follow for a few miles with a line of wells a sub- 

 terranean stream of fresh and not very deep water. 

 At Bella Vista a comunero has dug an acequia several 

 miles long, and he sells the water at a rate of five piastres 

 for forty-eight hours. But when it reaches the end 

 of the acequia, it is lost between the trench and the 

 field to which they would conduct it. At Ulapes, 

 though it is one of the chief centres, it takes the full 

 outflow of the spring during sixteen hours to irrigate 

 one cuadra (a little over two acres), and each man's 

 " turn " is for seventeen days. The entire oasis 

 measures about fifty acres. At Olta the thin stream 

 of water is surrounded by so many cupidities that the 

 " turn " comes only every fifty- eight days, so that 

 each field has to live fifty- eight days on one 

 watering. At Catuna where a trickle of brackish 

 water is eagerly collected at the foot of a dejection- 

 cone, the water-right is regulated by an arrangement 

 of turns that covers ninety days, so that plants 

 die of thirst in the interval. The plots vary 

 according to the quantity, quality, and regularity of 

 the water. The orange-tr6e is the most exacting, the 

 fig the most tenacious, of the trees. The poorest oases 

 consist only of a few gardens of dusty fig-trees. 



However small it is, the oasis always stands for a 

 rudiment of communal life, a poblado, a centre round 

 which life is organized in this pastoral, anarchic, 

 amorphous world. Land that has a water-right is 

 regarded as detached from the merced and never remains 

 undivided. 



Besides these properly irrigated lands there are the 

 banados : cultivated plots in the hollows, where the 

 moisture left by the storms is concentrated and pre- 

 served. These are much more extensive, and they 



