44 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



piece of land earning only fifty dollars an acre when it 

 could just as well be earning a hundred ? Indeed, there 

 is my friend, and that is to see it earning the hundred, 

 but taking two or three times the water and work it 

 ought to take. In the first case you can often plow up 

 and work over a piece without losing too much. But 

 in the second case you find it paying too well to destroy. 

 I have about thirty acres in just this fix which have 

 already ruined my chances for saintship and make me 

 me mad every time I irrigate them. Another tract laid 

 out properly shows that the first is taking more than 

 double the work and double the water to the acre that 

 the other is. As I irrigate both myself, I can not be ' 

 mistaken about it. The ground had been laid out by 

 others and by a competent engineer, it was said, and I 

 was in such a hurry to get in a crop that I did not 

 take time ta run a level over it myself. It was all 

 wrong, from start to finish ; ditches in wrong places for 

 good irrigation, and ground just uneven enough to cause 

 alfalfa leaves to dam it in spots, leaving islands half 

 dry unless an immense head of water is forced over 

 them. The other tract I laid out myself, and any child 

 that can hold a watch can irrigate it with either a big 

 head of water or a small one. 



But bad laying out may do much worse than this 

 and the neglect of proper drainage ditches or other dis- 

 posal of waste water may keep the settler bankrupt for 

 some time. And this is only one of your troubles. The 

 fact that some people go on dry land and make money 

 at once, and that nearly all eventually do far better than 

 they would in any rainy country does not at all alter the 

 fact that you are liable to meet a hard row of stumps 

 and should be prepared for them. I have room to 

 mention only one more, and that is alkali. 



Perhaps you think you know all about it, or that 

 an analysis will settle the question. A positive analysis 

 or one showing what is considered a dangerous amount 

 of alkali is all right, and unless the drainage is perfect, 

 or can be made so, you had better let it alone. But a 

 negative analysis, showing no dangerous amount of 

 alkali, is very unreliable for many reasons, too long to 

 state now. 



It was reserved for me at the age of sixty and 

 after twenty-five years of experience and observation in 

 southern California, and after seeing all its alkali lands, 

 as well as much of those in other states and Mexico, to 

 collide with the genuine article in its most fascinating 

 form. Nearly fifteen years ago a ditch was built at 

 Daggett, on the Mojave River, controlling thousands of 

 acres of elegant looking mesa land, which were true 

 desert and subject to entry as such. Some fifty entries 

 were made under the law and nine parties, supplied 

 with teams, seed and provisions by the company, went 

 to work. In two years all was abandoned, the school 

 house burned for fire wood by hobos, and the half fin- 

 ished hotel dragged away piecemeal at night by more en- 

 terprising citizens. Three years later the Salvation Army 

 tried it and sent out an Englishman, born and raised 

 in the bes.t irrigating section of India. Six months 

 amused him sufficiently and again the whole was aban- 

 doned. None of them could raise enough to feed a pair 

 of horses and the general verdict was that the land was 

 "no good." 



T had seen enough in other places to feel certain 

 that the fertility of the soil was but a trifling factor in 

 raising alfalfa, if indeed it were a factor at all after the 



first few months, and that any soil fine enough to start 

 the seed would raise it provided the drainage was perfect 

 and there was water enough to irrigate it heavily when 

 big. The drainage was perfect all open soil for ninety 

 feet with no cut-off from hard pan or fine layers. A 

 series of severe -dry years proved the permanency of 

 the water supply and though it was nothing near what 

 had been calculated for underflow, it was still large 

 enough for a fine proposition. The owners being weary 

 I gathered in the fragments of the wreck and I came 

 out to start things right. Two different parties had 

 failed on the piece I opened up on, but as it was the 

 nearest to town and had the ditches in the best order I 

 began on that. I was warned by everyone far and near 

 that I would fail and if it had not been for having my 

 reputation at stake I guess I would have done so. But 

 I was sure perfect drainage would raise good alfalfa 

 and that was all any one need want. Pride did the rest. 

 For over two years the sympathy of half the town 

 was worse than the jeers and "I told you so" of the other 

 half. Arriving in cold weather I first tried barley for 

 hay and got in five acres in fine shape as the soil took 

 water wonderfully and held moisture splendidly with no 

 excess. The crop in April just about kept the splinters 

 of the wagon bed out of my anatomy as I rode home on 

 it. Then it was time to plant alfalfa and thirty pounds 

 of seed to the acre went in on a tract wet twenty feet 

 deep deeply plowed, harrowed, combed and groomed in 

 the most approved style. Result about one plant to a 

 square rod. It was plain that the dry air dried out the 

 top soil before the seed could start and that the soil was 

 so coarse that this could not be remedied by rolling. 

 I got the best chain drill on the market, drilled the 

 seed into dry, unplowed ground so as to get a perfect 

 covering with the dry dirt falling back on it instead of 

 wet clods, and then irrigated heavily so as to seal it 

 over. Result in four days a stand like hair on the pro- 

 verbial dog. 



The second pair of leaves came on quickly and 

 everything looked lovely when all of a sudden it looked 

 less lovely. Some of it began to look sick, some turn- 

 ing yellow, some bluish, some quietly doing nothing. 

 On one tract of nine acres it was all yellow and stood 

 still at about an inch high for over a year. I staked out 

 numbers of plants and watched them daily. Some 

 gave up the ghost after six or eight months but most 

 of them kept alive. On another large tract most of 

 the plants died. Where they lived they did not turn 

 yellow at all but turned bluish in sheets, revived at 

 once with water, to turn bluish again in three or four 

 days. But it was fourteen months before any of it 

 was large enough to turn a horse on with a clear con- 

 science. 



Some of the town folks said "How the devil do you 

 expect anything to grow in that ground? There's no 

 substance in it." One man who had been done up in 

 farming on another part of the same desert thought 

 that if I would "plant buckwheat first to suck the pizen- 

 out of it" that it might grow something. But no one 

 mentioned alkali and out of a dozen experts who had 

 examined the land years before not one had mentioned 

 alkali. None showed on the surface with any amount 

 of water and the plants that died lacked the rusty hue 

 of alkali killing. In a few spots of low, tight soil a 

 trifle of alkali showed, but no more than in the best 

 parts of California and Arizona. A cubic foot of soil' 

 selected in such places over an area of fifty feet square- 



