THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



51. 



greatest in area of any state in the Union. My own county is aboiit 

 as large as most all of the New England States, eliminating Maine. Across 

 the state of Texas it is a greater distance from El Paso to the Sabine 

 River on the opposite side of the state than it is from El Paso to 

 Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I was three days and three nights getting to 

 Cheyenne, Wyoming. 



"It is needless for me to say to this convention that the so-called 

 science of dry farming is not new, for people were raising food-stuffs 

 and living in semi-arid regions long before anybody ever thought of turn- 

 ing a river uphill. 



Dry Farming in Palestine. 



"We know that the people in Palestine and Northern Africa have 

 been raising successful crops without irrigation a lot longer than Wil- 

 liam E. Curtis has been writing letters for the Chicago papers. 



"But down in my section of the country we do not have to go back 

 to Asia or Africa to learn that the people have practiced dry farming 

 for ages, for we have evidences right at home of their success before 

 thy knew what it was to take the water from the rivers by canal and 

 divert it to the lands susceptible of irrigation. 



Prehistoric Dry Farming. 



"Down in Northern Mexico are found the ruins of farms of a pre- 

 historic race without any evidences of canals; in fact, unless the coun- 

 try was considerably different from what it is now, they would have 

 needed better engineers in those days of which history speaks not, than 

 we have now, to make the water run up some of the mountains on the 

 top of which they raised corn, wheat and other staples of life. And for 

 miles and miles in many directions from these ruins, there are no evi- 

 dences of water either present or past, and even to the present day 

 tequila and mescal are' the only liquids that play a very prominent part 

 in many of the communities that exist by following the pursuit of hus- 

 bandry. 



Indian Dry Farmers. 



"The Tarahumari Indians, of northern Chihuahua, said to be a rem- 

 nant of the original band of prehistoric people of whom we have the first 

 evidences of farming without irrigation, are among the most thriving 

 of the aboriginal tribes of northern Mexico, and they till their soil by 

 what we are today pleased to term 'scientific cultivation,' The Indian 

 calls it common sense; some Americans call it dry farming. Call it 

 what you will, it means getting out of the ground what nature intended 

 us to get out of it, and the Indians are doing this most successfully. 



Indians Seldom Fail. 



"Dr. C. F. Z. Caracristi, a mining and civil engineer who has traveled 

 over the entire world, and has of late been making some investigations 

 among the Tarahumaris, declares that he never saw better crops in all 

 his life than these Indians produce, and that they do it all merely 



