bad irrigation is to no irrigation. But not always. If the best work costs too much and the market is unsteady there may be too much risk in this. You may be able to do one kind of work yourself but with another may have to hire help or buy material. And if you are working the ground merely for your own convenience and care little for looks bad work may be good enough. Suppose you have a bed of onions for your own use. If any way of injuring them materially by bad wetting can be devised I have not yet been able to discover it. By good work you might get a better crop and if you were raising them to sell it would doubtless pay you to do better work. But you can not much affect the quality of the onion by any style of applying water and with any reasonable amount of it you will have from a small piece of ground more onions than you can use. Out of pure curiosity I have made desperate efforts to damage the radish. with bad irrigation; but as long as it gets enough water the quality is hard to injure and the yield from a small bit of ground will be large enough, if the weather is right. It is much the same with beets, cabbage, carrots and all tough vegetables. But if you are raising stuff to sell and have a sure market the very best work will generally pay and for all high grade products is quite certain to.

The rainfall and its distribution as well as the kind of weather that generally follows rain will also have an important influence upon your choice of a system. In much of Southern California, the ground holds moisture well and the rainfall averages about eighteen inches with a minimum of about seven happening only at very long intervals. Good crops of grain on a rainfall of only twelve inches, some of which by coming too early is practically lost, are a common sight in short years. And with good summer following fair crops are raised on the very minimum of seven inches. Thirty bushels of corn on upland on which not a drop of rain has fallen since the seed was planted are common on well plowed and cultivated uplands in average seasons without a particle of irrigation. And where the ground is well cultivated good yields of fruit are mon even in the average years if the trees are not too old or too heavily loaded. The dry period is generally more than six

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months but with good cultivation the moisture retained in the ground from the winter rains carries most things through quite well. I am fully aware of how monstrous these statements will appear to many, but the truth can be had from hundreds of places, and not for one year, but for over a dozen.

Under such conditions vegetation may need but a little drinking water and any way of supplying it may be good enough for the purpose in hand. The soil may be nearly moist enough to enable the roots to feed and may need but a trifle more. Such is the case in the greater part of the States east of the Mississippi where irrigation will certainly be used before many years to carry many products over the periods when the rainfall is too short and where it would pay them to do it now if they only knew it. But it would be folly to put in the expensive systems necessary in those sections where the rainfall is of little or no use, and where the air is so much hotter and drier that vegetation demands more water to evaporate through the leaves. And it might be equally unwise to do the fine work that for high grade products pays so well in California. The only trouble is that from fair results from careless work too many conclude that it is good enough anywhere.

GRADE THE LAND.

In whatever way you apply the water it will pay you to have the land so graded to a uniform slope that the water will run in all directions at about the same velocity. This will be true if you are to run it only from one small basin to another, still truer if you are to run it in large heads from check to check, and still more important if you are to run it in a large number of small streams across the tract. You will get back all it costs in time and patience to say nothing of the greater uniformity of the wetting, and the greater ease of cultivation and consequent better results. It is almost impossible to make people realize this until there has been considerable loss, and often not until the place is planted in an orchard that is paying just a little too well to take out, where the trees are too old to allow good grading between, and yet in yield are steadily falling behind a well-graded orchard beside it. No matter how even or level land may appear it

is almost never even enough to irrigate. The result is a swamp here and a dry ridge or hump there. When the swamp is dry enough to cultivate the other is too dry. Uniform moisture throughout the whole is impossible while the work of handling the water and the cultivator afterward is often doubled.

You

This grading is not nearly so expensive as one would suppose from looking at the places of those who have plenty of money and want everything symmetrical. The ground does not need leveling or anything near it. It is not of the slightest consequence whether the water is to run straight across a field or slanting. Nor, aside from looks, is it necessary that the slanting course should be the diagonal of the field. Nor need the furrows be straight or trees or vines planted on perfectly straight lines. Nor need the whole place be graded to the same plane. may have two or more slopes even five-acre tract. And no inconvenience from having too many faces could equal the inconvenience of leaving the ground in its natural condition. In whatever direction the water is to run it should run at about the same speed whether it is to be in small streams or big ones. And if the water is to stand on the ground, as in flooding, the depth should be as nearly uniform as is reasonably possible. These are cardinal principles and the man who neglects them will regret it, perhaps when too late.

on a

This grading can be cheaply done if the ground is in the right condition of moisture from rain, properly plowed and a good machine used. It can be made very expensive by ignoring these conditions.

It

can not be well done with small scrapers that bounce. A road grader does very well and some scrapers are made purposely for this work. But for a few dollars one can make one that will do as well as anything if heavy enough and enough horses put to it. Two long heavy beams, the longer and heavier the better, should be well bolted into an A shaped scraper: An iron shoe along each lower edge should be attached and made so as to cut. The lugs to which the drag chain is to be fastened should be several in number and running down each side of the apex, so that in a moment either edge may be set at any angle to the course of the team. This will smooth down almost any ground

that has been well plowed, and, cut down considerable that has not been. If weighted with sand bags and drawn by several horses it will cut wet ground quite well without plowing. If long enough, heavy enough and used long enough it is certain to put an even slope on almost any soil sufficiently open to be well drained. Where there are ravines to fill or boulders to remove the expense is of course increased and one must then begin to inquire whether the value of the product is great enough to justify the use of that piece of land. But do not solve the question the other way, as many do,-decide they will use that land but that the cost of grading is too great to put it in proper shape. As a rule if it costs much to grade that proves it is worth little without the grading. In such cases get another piece. Some of the best orchards in California cost one hundred dollars an acre for the

grading alone. Some now bearing the heaviest crops of the finest oranges and lemons look smooth as silk on the surface, yet two feet below big boulders are so thick that you could not take out a cubic yard of them and repack them as closely as they are there in place. Ravines ten feet deep in places have been filled with the loose rock from the surface and covered over with dirt. Warmth and perfect drainage make this ground valuable for high grade fruits, fertility being of trifling importance beside these conditions, though even this ground is much more fertile than one would suppose. But for every dollar the owner laid out on this ground he will get back five or ten. То have attempted to irrigate it in its natural state would have been almost madness. The same principles apply, however, to ground that looks all right and needs but little work. The difference is only in degree, and if but little work is needed it is all the more reason it should be done. If much is needed it only proves that the land is almost worthless without it and if the crops won't justify the expense you should get a piece where they will.

You must not be led astray by talk about different systems of irrigation. Nothing is more absurd than to hear some one talking about "the diagonal system " for instance because the furrows are run diagonally across the field, or flooding

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called a "border system" or a plat system" because the checks are made small, or something called "subirrigation" because the water soaks upward from underneath, either from general soaking of the subsoil from big ditches on porous soil, or from the upward seepage from small furrows made very deep so that the plant stands on a high ridge between them. All this multiplication of nonsensical distinctions is confusing. Great numbers of

such distinctions have been made and most of them are as valuable as the old distinction between tweedle dum and tweedle dee. When familiar with the principles on which the value of all of them depends you will see that systems are very few in number and very simple. And even then you will find that some are

AT

used, not because they are the best, but because the cheapest. Alfalfa for instance can be raised as well, and on some soils better, by watering from many small furrows. There is no better alfalfa in the world than that raised in this way. If the water supply allows you to flood it will generally allow you to irrigate in this way. If you are raising only an acre or so for home use, for a milch cow and a few chickens, etc., it will probably be cheaper and easier to use the small furrows, as is done on thousands of small patches in Southern California. But if you are raising large crops in large fields, then the economy is generally the other way, and where the land is very flat it becomes by far the cheaper method.

(Copyright 1895, by T. S. Van Dyke.)

T the eastern base of the Shoshone mountains, where the river of that name emerges from the shadows of its canons to cross the plains of the Big Horn Basin, is a series of terraces left by the receding waters of some prehistoric lake.

These lie one below the other along this stream for forty miles, extending back from it two to ten miles. So uniform is the contour of these successive steps that in many places water will follow a surface furrow along section lines across an entire township. The abundant water supply of the river, the fertility of the soil, and the ease with which water can be distributed, give these slopes a peculiar fascination to the practical irrigator.

Ever since the advent of the first emigrant this tract of land has been a source of longing to the homeseeker. As the possibilities of this region became better understood its attractions have increased until it has become generally known and regarded as the most extensive and desirable body of irrigable land in the state.

At present the entire tract is arid and unoccupied. Even the speculative land grabber, masquerading as a homesteader, has not found it worth his attention. The prospect of diverting the river which flows through it has seemed so remote and the obstacles so formidable that it has been

considered a project for the next century rather than the present. The Shoshone river from where it leaves the mountains until it passes the lowest terrace is hid below the nearly vertical rock walls of a canon almost as deep as it is wide.

To surmount these rocky slopes with a canal is out of the question. To reach these lands in any manner is equally beyond the reach of the individual settler. Nothing but aggregated capital and the best engineering skill will answer. Neither of these were available under the public land laws which make canal building a lottery in which the builders buy the tickets and the settlers, on the land reclaimed, draw the prizes; but with the passage of the state law accepting supervision of one million acres of land for reclamation the opportunity was open to invite the joint efforts of the capitalist and colonist to effect its transformation.

This law came at an opportune season. Increasing settlement has demonstrated the wonderful fertility of this soil and has shown that the shelter afforded by the snow-clad mountains which surround the Big Horn basin gives to this region a local climate, milder and more uniform than is enjoyed by any of the surrounding country. country. The curative virtues of the medicinal springs which gave this river its

original name are becoming widely and favorably known; four thousand acres north of the river have been located as gold placers which can only be washed by a canal high enough to irrigate the entire tract.

The

The region surrounding the headwaters of the Shoshone river is one of the greatest game preserves in the Rocky mountains, and is destined to be one of the Nation's pleasure grounds in the near future. unique grandeur of the scenery of the Hoodoo or Goblin mountains will become more and more attractive as new trails are opened into their hitherto inaccessible heights. One serious drawback has been its isolation. Fifty miles to the nearest railway station is farther than the average pioneer desires to go. Red Lodge is about that distance from the center of these lands. This objection promises to be removed at an early date; the transcontinental survey of the Burlington railway passes up the Shoshone river and the last extension to Billings, Montana, leaves it only ninety miles away.

THE PROPOSED CANAL.

These considerations have drawn the attention of the outside world, have led to three separate surveys to discover a feasible canal line, and have finally resulted in a location which while covering nearly

three-fourths of the entire tract is secure and not exceptionally expensive.

The river canon is avoided by beginning the canal above Cedar mountain, the last range cut through by the river. The canal emerges from the mountains through a low pass several miles south of the river and about five hundred feet above it. This is accomplished with but little heavy work. The terraced formation extends above this mountain and the lake deposit has covered the underlying rock to a depth which affords easy ground for the required excavation. Actual construction began in September, and at last accounts about three miles had been completed, it being the intention to construct seven miles before January 1, 1896. The permit from the State Engineer's office is for a canal sixty-five feet wide and six feet deep, with a grade of two feet per mile. The portion completed is only excavated one-half this width, it being the intention to enlarge as increasing use makes necessary. In this way a large part of the con

struction work will be reserved for the settlers who will be given preference in letting contracts therefor.

In many of its features this canal is destined to occupy a unique place among our great irrigation works. With most canals, the problem is to secure elevation, with this it is to dispose of it. The headgate is five thousand, seven hundred feet above sea level. In fifty miles the canal falls twelve hundred feet and the lower end is little if any above four thousand feet above the sea.

This excessive slope requires a series of drops. The first occurs at the pass south of Cedar mountain. Here is a vertical fall of two hundred and fifty feet, the water tumbling down a rocky slope. Nearly all the drops are arranged to occur at the passage from one terrace to the next below. In this way the expense is greatly lessened. Two of these will require the construction of chutes to confine the water in its descent and protect the canal from its erosive action; but in two others the water will find its own channel down rocky slopes, the material being hard enough to resist its erosive action. One drop occurs at the head of the ravine in which the placer deposits are found and a head of two hundred feet can be had for hydraulic mining. The first descent will doubtless soon be used for the generation of electricity for both lighting and power, as it is near the Shoshone Hot Springs and the proposed town of that name. Doubtless the entire available water power will in time be utilized.

While the headgate is on the south side of the stream about ninety thousand acres of land to be reclaimed are on the north. To reach this will require either a flume one hundred and twenty feet high, or a pipe passing down one side of the canon and up the other. The canon at the point selected for the crossing is about one bundred and fifty feet wide on the bottom and three hundred and fifty feet at the level of the proposed flume.

Between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty thousand acres of irrigable land can be watered from this canal. If settled in small tracts it will support twice the present population of the entire State. If half is placed under cultivation it will be six times the cultivated area of the entire State in 1890.

Such a work has more than local interest. It is not only the most important irrigation work yet seriously considered in the State, but its magnitude as compared to what has heretofore been accomplished is so great as to overshadow all past efforts, and its success is destined to exercise a decisive influence on the future of the State.

In the face of the increase in population and material wealth which must accrue, the malignant and demagogical opposition to agricultural development, which has beset this enterprise and which has been so conspicuous a feature of this State's history, must cease. The effort to keep this State as an open range, to array selfish interests against the State's growth, to arouse prejudice against canal companies by demagogical appeals, has succeeded in placing Wyoming behind every surrounding State in population and material prosperity. The inauguration of this project under these adverse conditions means a different and more enlightened appreciation of our opportunities.

This project is conceived on a broad scale. A mammoth canal; an extensive area to be reclaimed; immense possibilities for material development in the generation of cheap power for mechanical purposes; the creation of important towns in what is now an unbroken solitude, and the transformation of the conditions of one of the most favored sections of the State are attractive material results, but they are equaled by the generous purpose which inaugurated this enterprise and which animates its president and leading spirit.

BUFFALO BILL'S ENTERPRISE.

"I propose to leave a monument of my work for the West by founding a colony

in the Big Horn basin which shall be to Wyoming what the Greeley Colony is to Colorado."

This statement of Col. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) explains the origin and underlying purpose of the Cody Canal. While the work is intended to be a financial success, and will be managed to that end, philanthropy is to share with profit in all its transactions. It is not to be a canal to acquire title to land. The land. goes only to actual settlers in tracts not to exceed one hundred and sixty acres to each settler. It is not intended to speculate on the rise in land values. Each settler pays fifty cents an acre, no more, no less. Twenty-five cents on making entry and twenty-five cents when proof is made of reclamation. It is not a canal to derive a perpetual exorbitant income from water rights. Each settler under the canal must purchase an interest therein. Not a vague promise, such as constitutes many instruments known as water rights, but an actual proportionate interest in the work itself. The water rights come from the State, attach to the land reclaimed and are inseparable therefrom. The interests

or

in the canal will be based on the cost of the work. It is simply capital, energy and system combined to construct the works for the settlers, who, when they are paid for, will own and control them.

If the experience of the last quarter of a century is to be a guide this canal is destined to be a success. A success because the physical conditions are favorable and because settlers are here freed from

many of the economic mistakes, not to characterize them more harshly, which have marked settlement under earlier attempts at canal building on a large scale.