190 FOREST OUTINGS 



brought down from the mountains, snow reports are almost as carefully 

 followed as are cotton reports in Memphis. "Next summer's rain," the 

 dry-land people say when they lift their eyes and behold clean snow on the 

 mountains. Up the mountains, all winter long, rangers are taking snow 

 samples along trails laid out to touch points of representative precipitation. 

 They travel on skis or snowshoes and take their samples with the thrust 

 of a hollow tube. Machines have lately been acquired, on some forests, to 

 measure and calibrate snowfall more easily, but much of the work still is 

 done without technological improvements. 



In any case, the total snowfall recorded does not, like rainfall, signify 

 that that much water will be delivered upon thirsting ground for crops, 

 for industrial use, or for city reservoirs. So much depends on the rate of 

 thaw in the spring. If the melt is gradual, a big snow crop on the mountains 

 is a blessed gift. But if the snow crop piles high and the melt comes abruptly, 

 fiercely, it can play the very devil up there on the mountainsides and below. 



"Water-drunk" is another phrase which passes as current, without 

 need of a fuller explanation, among rural and urban dry-land contenders 

 for mountain water brought down to dry lands. Water is the life blood of 

 any region, and in sernidesert or desert communities men know that. They 

 dream of and fight over water rights with a fervor that more sheltered men 

 in humid climates find hard to understand. The classic fable concerning 

 Tantalus, who thirsted and could see water but couldn't get at it, has a 

 special meaning nowadays to many a western American, concerned as to 

 the continuance of a clean and ample water supply. Lawsuits over water 

 rights in the general vicinity of Hollywood, for instance, greatly exceed in 

 number and importance other court battles of the movie stars, but naturally 

 receive as news much less attention. And it would, when you stop to think 

 about it, be publicity altogether lacking in glamour. 



Before closing this chapter on water, let us turn back briefly to the prob- 

 lems sketched in the previous chapter — fire. The relation between destruction 

 of cover and calamitous bursts of run-off becomes each year more shockingly 

 plain. Consider the reservoir now called Harding, in San Diego County, 

 Calif. It was constructed in 1900. It did pretty well until 1926. Then fire got 

 loose and burned off nearly all the cover on its watershed. Torrential rains 



