The Waters of the Rio Grande 47 
lis are injurious and have rendered the land worthless. I undertook 
some 15 years ago to ascertain the maximum amount of alkalis that 
might be present in an irrigating water without becoming injurious to 
the crop. I found the maximum so high that its ascertainment might 
have been interesting, but was of no practical value. The 60-bushel 
crop of wheat referred to in this paragraph was irrigated with seep¬ 
age water that carried nearly 500 grains of ordinary alkalis to the im¬ 
perial gallon, and the land was already rich in these salts. I took a 
sample of this soil during the summer of the preceding year, selecting 
a spot in which corn had almost failed and obtained 4.67 percent solu¬ 
ble in water, of which 69.0 percent was sulfates and 19.0 percent chlo- 
rids. This of course was the surface soil, but this is the portion inva¬ 
riably considered when this subject is spoken of. It is true that some¬ 
times the alkali in a certain depth of soil is mentioned, but this is not 
usually the case. 
UNPRODUCTIVENESS DUE TO SOME CAUSE OTHER THAN 
ALKALIS 
When an ordinary alkali land is unproductive, or practically bar¬ 
ren, as some of the San Luis Valley land is, there is some other condi¬ 
tion contributing to the unproductiveness rather than the ordinary al¬ 
kalis. Too much water is sometimes an efficient cause, but my obser¬ 
vations in the field, as well as my experience with beets in thoroughly 
seeped land, make me rather more cautious in making assertions in re¬ 
gard to this as a cause of unproductiveness than many persons are. 
The practice of subirrigating may be unreasonable, but if the state¬ 
ments of those practicing it be in any reasonable measure reliable, the 
results obtained throw doubt on the correctness of much that is said 
regarding the subject of a high water-plane. Their practice may 
amount to water-culture on a large scale, be it so —they raise the crops. 
The fact is probably this; that parties expected to give an explanation, 
knowing, as every other person knows, that something is wrong when 
large areas formerly productive become unproductive, and feeling im¬ 
pelled to assign a cause, practically adopt the irresponsible view that 
they might as well assign it to alkali or to a high water-table as to any¬ 
thing else, because these are visible, and it is difficult to prove that they 
may not be the cause. The assertion, especially concerning the com¬ 
mon white alkali, is of little value by whomsoever it may be made, 
while the evils due to seepage have been well ridden in our country for 
some years. There is no question, but that seepage is a real, and a 
serious problem, and one that is likely to become more so, but it is pos¬ 
sible to attribute results to seepage for which it may be only indirectly, 
if at all, responsible. There may be troubles in a seeped country due 
to other causes than the seepage and which drainage may or may not 
alleviate. 
