suppose that the present inhabitants of Peru and Bolivia, practicing irrigation as they do to-day, in the crudest conceivable manner, could have sprung from a race which was at one time master of the art, by whom aqueducts, canals and reservoirs were constructed on an immense scale, and in such an enduring manner that they have defied the changes of many centuries. When or by whom they were built cannot be definitely ascertained, but there is ample proof that the people who planned and maintained them were in many ways highly civilized. Some of the aqueducts were of great length, one that traversed the district of Condesuyos measured nearly five hundred miles. The water was brought from a lake or natural reservoir in the heart of the mountains and additional supplies were obtained at intervals from other basins that lay in their route. Prescott remarks: "Canals and aqueducts were seen crossing the lowlands in all directions, and spreading over the country like a vast net work, diffusing fertility and beauty around them." Most of these works of the Incas have been allowed by their Spanish conquerors to go to decay. In some spots the waters are still left to flow in their silent channels, whose windings and sources have been alike unexplored. Others, though partially dilapidated and closed with rubbish and rank vegetation, still betray their course by occasional patches of fertility. Such are the remains in the valley of the Narca, a fruitful spot lying between long tracts of desert, where the ancient water-courses of the Incas, measuring four or five inches in depth by three feet in width, and formed by long blocks of granite, uncemented, are conducted from unknown distance.

an

$14. The Nahua Nations.-While on the subject of prehistoric nations I will refer to the works of the Nahua Nations, especially of those tribes known as the Aztecs and Toltecs, who formerly lived in Central America, Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona. We are told in history that when Cortes visited Mexico, for the purpose of irrigating the fields the water of the rivers and mountain streams were utilized by means of canals, dams and ditches, and that the net work of canals

by which the plantations were watered offered to Cortes' army very serious obstruction.1 Probably the greatest souvenir left by the aboriginal races of North America is to be found in the maze of prehistoric canals found in the Salt River and Gila Valleys of Arizona. The age of these canals is entirely unknown, and purely a matter of conjecture. That they were constructed by a race of people who had attained a far higher degree of civilization than the aborigines who inhabit that part of the country goes without saying. There is but one tradition among the present Indian tribes concerning these canals, and that relates to their destruction. When Coronado, in 1542, was seeking the seven cities of Cibola he found several tribes of aborigines in what is now Arizona, supporting themselves wholly or in part by tilling the soil. These tribes themselves occupied but a limited area, but widely scattered groups of ruins prove that in early centuries the principal valleys were inhabited by a numerous people who had lived chiefly by agriculture, and to-day in many districts their irrigating canals are still to be seen. Coronado was astonished by the extent and size of these canals, but failed to learn aught of their age or builders, except a tradition of the hasty flight of that prehistoric people and the destruction of their works. Whether the tradition as related to the Spaniards under Coronado and by the aborigines themselves, which has been handed down to the present time, is true as to the actual history of the canals, or whether it is a creation of a later day, it is hard to say. But often times what is considered to be mythology and tradition in one age is proven in the next to be fact. It is certainly true that the tradition of the natives is corroborated to a great extent by still existing evidences. The ruins. of these canals are plainly visible in the Gila and Salt River Valleys, running almost to the Colorado River, and everywhere are to be found the traces of ancient civilization of a

1 2 Bancroft's Works, 349.

2 17 Bancroft's Works, 549; I Bancroft's Works, 539; Garces Diano, in Doc. Hist. Mex.Series 2 Tom. I Pp. 235, 37. "We were at once im

pressed with the beauty, order and disposition of the arrangements for irrigating." Emory in Fremont and Emory's Notes of Trav. pp. 47-8; 1 Irrigation Age, 26.

high order, evidences of hasty flight, as well as the ravages of fire, the salient features of pillage.

$15. Nahua Nations, continued.-Arizona.-In Arizona are to be found remains of prehistoric canals which with their laterals must exceed a thousand miles in length, and the ruins of many of them give evidence of the expenditure of vast labor in their construction. One of the largest of these canals took the water from the south side of Salt River, about twenty-five miles from the present city of Phoenix, and after leaving the river ran for several miles through a formation of hard volcanic rock. Thus without explosives of any kind, and with the simple tools of the stone age, the aboriginal constructors of the ditch excavated a canal through solid rock of the hardest formation to a depth varying from twenty to thirty feet, and to a width of about twenty feet, and having a capacity of from ten thousand to fifteen thousand miner's inches when the river was at its ordinary stages. The evidence of the vast amount of labor expended in its construction by the the chipping process is plain upon the face of the rock itself, while for miles on both sides of the canal can be found vast numbers of worn out stone axes and hammers. A party of Mormons have succeeded in clearing away the accumulated debris and restoring the ditch to its original usefulness, and have thereby converted a barren waste into fertile fields, now occupied by twenty thousand people. The canal is at present known as the Mesa Canal, and supplies Mesa City and vicinity with water for irrigating and other purposes. Two miles east of the above mentioned canal, but on the other side of the river, is the head of the great Arizona Canal, the largest in the south-west if not on the Pacific Coast, carrying as it does nearly fifty thousand inches of water. Its construction was also suggested by the remains of a prehistoric canal that could be traced for many miles, and the promoter of the new enterprise, in the firm belief that what had been done could be done again under like conditions, had the pleasure of seeing completed a water way which reclaimed over one hundred thousand acres in and around the city of Phoenix. Forty miles west of the Arizona Canal, and

a few miles below the junction of the Salt River with the Gila on the North bank of the latter river, is the head of another ditch which from the traces of prehistoric civilization found along its banks is of even more interest. It is called the "Acequa of the painted rocks," and commences where it can take from the Gila not only the waters of that stream, but also the water of all the canals lying north and east of it as well. Portions of the canal have been reclaimed, but those parts which the hand of modern civilization has not touched are still so distinct that their remains may be traced without difficulty for fifty miles, while between it and the Gila river, in the lands which were formerly irrigated from it, can be found the relics of ancient civilization in profusion, not only in the shape of ruined buildings, but also of pottery, stone implements and weapons, ornaments, etc. But another curious feature of this canal, and the strongest evidence of the great length of time which has elapsed since the system of irrigation was maintained, is that a few miles below the point where it crosses the Hassayamba creek it traverses a mesa or bench for several miles, from which it falls abruptly into a valley some forty or fifty feet below. Where this fall takes place the waters of the canal have cut away for several feet the walls of the mesa, which are of the hardest volcanic character. As every evidence indicates that the erosion of the rock has been accomplished by the action of the water alone centuries must have been required for the work. Upon the face of the rock thus cut away are to be found hieroglyphics of every description, of the meaning of which the present aborigines know nothing. From these inscriptions the white man has given them the name of "Painted Rocks."

§ 16. A Court Opinion upon the History of the Subject.Mr. Justice Barnes, in rendering the decision of the Supreme Court of Arizona, in the case of Clough vs. Wing, in the year 1888,1 went into the history of the subject, and in the course of his very able opinion, said: "The right to appropriate and

1 17 Pac. Rep. 455.

use water for irrigation has been recognized longer than history, and since earlier than tradition. Evidences of it are to be found all over Arizona and New Mexico in the ancient canals of a prehistoric people, who once composed a dense and highly civilized population. These canals are now plainly marked, and some modern canals follow the track and use the work of this forgotten people. The native tribes, the Pimas and Papagoes and other Pueblo Indians, now as they for generations have done, appropriate and use the waters of these streams, in husbandry, and sacredly recognize the rights acquired by law and use, and no right of a riparian owner is thought of. The only right in water is found in the right to conduct the same through their canals to their fields, there to use the same in irrigation. The same was found to prevail in Mexico among the Aztecs, the Toltecs, the Vaquis and other tribes at the time of conquest, and remained undisturbed in the jurisprudence of that country until now. It existed also in Peru, though there the appropriation was by the state, which constructed and maintained the canals for the use of the tillers of the soil. The Spanish conquerors brought the same idea with them from Spain where they prevailed then as now. Escriche, tit Agua,' §§ III, IV., and Acequia.' The Lombard kings following the Roman practice encouraged and extended irrigation in Italy. From Lombardy the art extended to France; while the Moors encouraged it in Spain, Sicily and Algeria.' Ency. Brit., 9th edition. Necessity required it in the districts which comprise parts of the south of Spain, Portugal and Italy, including Sicily and Greece.' Id. 'Ruins of ancient irrigating works are found in Spain.' Id. In Egypt and in some parts of Persia, India and some parts of China, this form of husbandry has been practiced from time immemorial and still continues. Under the civil law water was publici juris and by that law the 'first person who chooses to appropriate a natural stream to a useful purpose has title against the owner of the land below, and may deprive him of the benefit of the natural flow of the water.' Per Denman in Mason vs. Hill, 5 Barn. & Adol. 1. Thus we see that this is the oldest method of skilled husbandry and probably a large number of the human race have ever