IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES. 



H7 



has many and greater valleys of the Nile waiting to pour forth 

 enormous harvests whenever the legislative and executive work 

 of the irrigator has been accomplished. 



If I were writing a history of irrigation in America and a 

 wonderful story it is I should have to devote a chapter to the 

 Spanish influence in all the lands from Texas to southern Cali- 

 fornia, where men, whose mountaineer ancestors had learned the 

 value of water in arid districts from the builders of the Alham- 

 bra, made reservoirs and led many a fertilizing stream to acres of 

 vines and oranges on the high plains about old missions, or in 

 the adobe- walled gardens of newly founded towns, such as San 

 Antonio, Santa F6, and Los Angeles. I should have to tell about 

 the ruined irrigation canals of forgotten tribes in Arizona, south- 

 ern Utah, and other regions of the Southwest where hundreds of 

 square miles were covered with a network of water ditches, small 

 and great. The modern irrigator often adopts the grades of these 

 prehistoric channels for his enterprises, finding that no engineer 

 can improve upon them. I should have to describe the fields 

 under the red and yellow heights of Zuni or Acoma, where the 

 Pueblo Indians still raise their spotted corn by irrigation, as their 

 ancestors did centuries ago, .in the bottoms of narrow canons 

 where the ruins of their fortressed cliff -dwellings still remain. 

 But these things, except perhaps for a passing allusion, are for- 

 eign to the purpose of this investigation. 



The arid States and Territories are beginning to organize as a 

 group of communities that have common interests and a common 

 purpose. Their respective areas and populations are shown in 

 the following table : 



