ANNUAL ADDRESS. XI. 



the innumerable interests involved, it was only natural 

 that the question should be regarded as one which should 

 be dealt with by the Federal Government. With the 

 exception of such purely military works as fortifications, 

 the only large engineering works which are under the 

 charge of the Government engineers are those for the im- 

 provement of navigation and particularly of inland naviga- 

 tion ; but they have also charge of the preliminary surveys 

 of the vast extent of country known as the Arid Region, 

 including the taking of levels and locating the sites of 

 reservoirs for irrigation purposes. An officer of the United 

 States Engineers lately contributed an interesting article 

 to one of the magazines, recommending that the construc- 

 tion of reservoirs for irrigation purposes as well as the 

 locating of sites should be undertaken by the Federal 

 Government ; but no such step has been taken in this direc- 

 tion, nor does it seem likely that any will be taken. 



Coming now to the irrigation works of the United States 

 we find a record, like that of the railways, of almost un- 

 paralleled progress in which the Government has drawn the 

 benefits arising from increase of settlement, production, 

 and wealth, while it has incurred no outlay and no risk. In 

 a few unimportant cases, municipal authorities have con- 

 structed irrigation works on a small scale ; but as the 

 Honorable Alfred Deakin states in his valuable Report on 

 Irrigation in Western America, "All the irrigation works 

 of Western America, with the exceptions above named have 

 been constructed and maintained wholly and solely by 

 private persons. Not only has the Government spent 

 nothing upon them, but it has known nothing of them." 

 This report was presented by Mr. Deakin in June, 1885, 

 and since then the same system has been followed with 

 the same vigour. In 1893, an International Irrigation 

 Congress was held at Los Angeles in California, and repre- 



