702 TRANS-PECOS TEXAS. 



Fort Bliss (13) to be only sixteen inches, we get in a round number thirty- 

 seven millions of cubic feet, or two hundred and seventy-seven million five 

 hundred thousand gallons of water to the square mile, which, if stored, may 

 be regarded sufficient to irrigate several square miles, even if we allow one- 

 half for evaporation and imbibition by the soil. The moisture of the evapo- 

 rated water will benefit a considerable part of the country surrounding the 

 storage reservoirs. I found this confirmed by comparing the atmosphere in 

 valleys where permanent water holes or small streams exist with the atmos- 

 phere on the large waterless flats. The vegetation of such valleys and the 

 adjacent hill slopes at places where they are entirely outside the beneficial in- 

 fluences of direct irrigation above or below the surface, most of the plants are 

 so much stronger, so much earlier in bloom and maturity, that a superficial 

 observer might take them to be different species from those growing in the 

 waterless flats. I had no hygrometer at my disposal, and made my observa- 

 tions about the atmospheric moisture by comparing the weight of hydro- 

 scopic bodies, such as salt, sugar, tobacco, etc., and ascertained the increase 

 of the weight of salt at Pena Colorado (located at the Pena Colorado Springs) 

 to rise as high as sixty-five one-hundredths per cent during twenty-four 

 hours, although the tent was standing on perfectly dry ground, on a gravelly 

 hill slope one-half mile distant from the small creek. At the west side of the 

 Quitman Mountains, about five hundred feet above and six miles distant 

 from the nearest water, the Rio Grande, the increase of weight amounted to 

 about twenty-five one-hundredths higher in the- morning than in the evening. 

 Here also the tent stood on perfectly dry ground. 



The observations made during two years show clearly that in West Texas, as 

 in other places, the clouds mostly follow the stream courses, and as far as the 

 clouds charged with electricity are not influenced in their course by high 

 mountain ranges, they follow such flats where future investigation in all prob- 

 ability will ascertain the existence of subterranean water storage. There, in 

 the driest season, moist clouds (fogs) are forming during the night, which 

 later in the morning are dispersed by the higher rising sun. 



The water absorbed by imbibition or by accidental fissures in the rocks 

 will come to the surface at other places in the shape of springs, or it will sup- 

 ply wells, and certainly will not be lost to the country if stored in reservoirs. 



There are a number of locations for reservoirs in the mountains of Trans- 

 Pecos Texas, of which I shall mention only a few ; for instance, at the Rattle- 

 snake tanks (known also as Mica tanks), on the west side of a spur of the 

 Van Horn Mountains. A reservoir with a dam only twenty -five feet high 

 and about thirty feet long at the top would make a reservoir for about one 

 and one-half million cubic feet, or over eleven million gallons of water. The 



