CHAPTER IX 

 THE AWAKENING OF NEW MEXICO 



IN the southwestern Territories modern methods of 

 reclamation are asserting their influence in the midst of 

 historic and prehistoric irrigation scenes. 



In 1539 Fray Marcos de Nija, the earliest European 

 who trod the soil of New Mexico, travelled for five days 

 through a "valley well watered and in a high state of 

 cultivation, so that three thousand horsemen might have 

 been sustained there." Another sixteenth-century visit- 

 or saw corn-fields " watered by a small river which flowed 

 near by, along the banks of which were growing great 

 beds of roses, similar to those of Castile." Many a tour- 

 ist on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad has seen the in- 

 dustrious Pueblo Indians at work in their fields about 

 Laguna. The travellers of three hundred and fifty years 

 ago looked upon these same fields, which were irrigated 

 then precisely as now, and as they probably had been for 

 centuries before. 



New Mexico is much less favored in its water supply 

 than the northern States of the arid region. Many of 

 its streams are torrential and intermittent in character, 

 carrying water in floods at some seasons and exhibiting 

 dry channels when moisture is most needed. A large 

 portion of the water supply, when the irrigation iudus- 



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