﻿ix. d. 2 Christie: Irrigation in llocos Norte 103 



lateral heads, the water of the canal is carried across the Bang- 

 sirit estero in flumes. The Paratong canal has a capacity of 

 3,000 second liters. 



The Kamungao canal is about 6 kilometers long, and serves 

 over 800 hectares. It heads opposite the town of Bacarra, 

 and crosses the divide between the valley in which that town 

 is situated and Laoag, about 500 hectares of the land it serves 

 being situated in the latter municipality. The system is well 

 constructed, and is provided with masonry headgates and waste- 

 way. But conditions at the heading are such as to give rise 

 to some complaints from landowners on the Laoag side of the 

 shortage of water. The heading of the canal is at a bend in 

 the river; there is no diversion dam, and the channel is so high 

 that an inadequate supply of water is diverted. 



The Bisaya ditch which irrigates certain lands in Bintar 

 is of interest as showing what the natives are capable of doing, 

 because for the greater part of its course of 3 kilometers down 

 the canon of the Bacarra River the waterway is formed by a 

 masonry wall at the foot of the rock cliffs. 



All the irrigation done in this province depends on gravity. 

 No pumps, water wheels, or other mechanical devices are in use. 



It is of interest to know how the foregoing works and others 

 similar to them have been built and are maintained. No very 

 large landed estates are found in this province. 2 Even the 

 few landholdings of comparatively large extent are almost 

 invariably divided into several parcels separated from each other. 

 Hence, it is but seldom that any one man finds it to his interest 

 to build irrigation works of any considerable size for the use 

 of his land. Therefore, the necessary feed canals and other 

 works for bringing water from the rivers to the land must 

 be built by cooperation if they are to be built at all. This state 

 of things has given rise to a large number of irrigation societies. 

 These are of interest to a student of the Ilocano people for 

 two reasons; namely, their importance to the agriculture of 

 the region and their indication of the capacity of the people 

 for cooperative effort. 



These societies of the Ilocano people are a marked charac- 

 teristic of the Province of llocos Norte. In the Ilocano Provinces 

 of llocos Sur and La Union, not very much irrigation from 

 rivers and springs is practiced. Of the irrigation situation among 



1 According to the Philippine census of 1903, the average size of farms 

 and other parcels of land under cultivation in llocos Norte is only 0.622 

 hectare. This is one of the lowest averages to be found in the Philippine 

 provinces. 



