IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES. 161 



ized districts and the great irrigation corporations, there are illus- 

 trations in thousands of beautiful and fertile valleys, and upon 

 many a sunny hillside, that it pays to irrigate. 



In the old placer-mining regions of California one sees much 

 of the local use of water, ranch by ranch, spring by spring, 

 cheaply, easily, and effectually. The miners have long been 

 familiar with the management of water. They built hundreds 

 of miles of hydraulic mining ditches, triumphs of engineering 

 skill, bringing whole rivers from the snow peaks to the beds of 

 gold-bearing gravel below. They siphoned streams over moun- 

 tains ; they belted their flumes in mid-air to perpendicular cliffs 

 of granite a thousand feet from base to crest ; they changed little 

 Alpine valleys into mountain lakes. Such men as these find it 

 only child's play to water their hillside gardens, to wall up the 

 " flats " by mountain streams and flood them so that the white 

 clover or alfalfa keeps green there all the year. Thus one finds 

 oases of verdure and fruitfulness about the cottage houses of 

 thousands of mountaineers in Shasta, Trinity, Butte, Lassen, El 

 Dorado, and the whole Sierra range of mining counties south of 

 " Old Tuolumne." Such men as these live in all the mountain 

 ranges of the western half of the continent, and not the least at- 

 tractive chapter of the story of irrigation is that which tells of 

 their home acres. Even where the annual rainfall is more than 

 sufficient for the ordinary field crops and the deciduous fruits to 

 thrive without irrigation, the dry air and sunlight of the semi- 

 tropic summers often make the application of water desirable 

 for specialized horticulture, or for the greatest obtainable profit 

 from ordinary crops. 



Here, then, are the primary schools of the irrigator in the 

 thousands of hidden valleys of Idaho, Dakota, Utah, Colorado, 

 Nevada, and California. Out of them, upon the wide valley 

 plains, upon the vast distances of the high desert mesa lands, the 

 young men of the coming generation of irrigation adepts pass on 

 to greater victories. Artesian fountains spring up along their 

 paths ; rivers from regions of mountains, of forests and abundant 

 rainfall, follow in their footsteps ; they lead these rivers into the 

 desert and plant gardens there the grape, the olive, the date 

 palm, the orange, the lemon, the banana, the pomegranate. 



The facts and figures which I have used to show the progress 

 of the States and Territories of the arid region are crowded with 

 infinite suggestions and possibilities. Some time, it is not im- 

 probable, men may speak of the overflowing granaries, the un- 

 paralleled horticultural wealth along the Rio Grande, the Colo- 

 rado, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, and other great river 

 plains, as history speaks of Egypt and Assyria in their splendid 

 prime. What are the duties of the American people toward irri- 



TOL. XL1II. 12 



