164 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



are now deserted and falling into decay, occupied for a few days during each of the 

 .seasons of plowing, sowing, and harvesting, by a Chinese cook who prepares the meals 

 for the men who, living in their blankets, are employed temporarily for this work. 

 There can be no healthful social life under such conditions of isolation as the present 

 sj'stem entails. 



APPROPRIATION LAWS OF CALIFORNIA. 



In 1873 the law of appropriation was placed on the statutes of California. It is 

 familiar and does not need to be reproduced here. The idea of posting a notice in 

 order to tix a right has its origin in the practice of the miner in locating mineral 

 claims. The miner's notice was posted on the tract claimed and described its bound- 

 aries. It was a sufficient notice to all comers of what was taken. Another miner 

 could, with this before him, tix the boundaries of another claim without risk of inter- 

 ference. It accomplished the purpose for which it was designed. Some California 

 genius, whose name is lost to fame, conceived the idea that a notice posted at the 

 point of diversion would be just as efficient in fixing and defining a claim for water, 

 and so it passed into the statutes to be copied almost verbatim by nearly ever}' one 

 of the arid States at soiue stage of their irrigation career. How a notice posted in 

 the tule swamps at the outlet of Clear Lake could V^e seen and regarded by a citizen 

 of Yolo County, 50 miles away, is not clear. The statute imposed no restriction^ as 

 to the volume that might be appropriated bj- a single claimant, and as a result, each 

 claimed without regard to his own needs or to the prior uses of others. If the United 

 States Government had permitted or authorized settlers upon its unsui'veyed lands 

 to each claim everything within reach of his vision, and had allowed the claimants to 

 settle the boundaries of their respective claims by appeal to the local courts, we should 

 have had the same trouble with the land boundaries that we now have with water 

 rights, except for this, that a dispute between A and B as to the location of their land 

 lines and the manner of its adjustment need not necessarilj- be of any interest to Z, 

 who lives in another countj', while the adjustment of A and B's differences over a 

 water right, either by agreement or by the decree of a court, may mean the practical 

 extinguishment of the other rights to the Avaters of a stream. 



The manner of making a record under the law is equally faulty. Instead of 

 bringing together in one place the record of the filings on the same stream, the filings 

 are distributed in the records of the various counties through which a stream or its 

 tributaries flow. In the case under consideration, the records of the counties of Yolo, 

 Lake, and Colusa were searched before all the filings could be located. In order to 

 show the character of this record, an abstract of the filings on Cache Creek in Yolo 

 and Lake counties is given in the following tables: 



