outside of the two at Jamestown, can not be so explained. The Devil's Lake Basin is one source, and the drainage from the Red River and of the Turtle Mountains to the north probably accounts for the artesian wells found in those sections of North Dakota.

Opinion was unanimous in the two Dakotas in support of a liberal appropriation for an irrigation survey, and the demand was made on all sides that the General Government should appropriate also a sum of money sufficient to defray the expenses of rapid geologic and hydrographic reconnoissances by which the three forms of developing a water supply already named might be fairly outlined and located in connection with the physical features of the Dakotas. It is considered especially desirable that a reasonable and speedy effort should be made to ascertain the limits and character of the several well-belts, and that some experimental wells be sunk to give knowledge to the people and courage to the settlers, present and prospective. The appeal is, in your committee's judgment, a reasonable one, especially in view of the fact that there remains at least 21,000,000 acres more of public land still open to settlement. The chief crops of Dakota are the hard wheat, for which it is famous, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, and hay. The loss by drought is put at 40 per cent. for wheat, 80 for corn, and 30 for oats.

Evidence was given showing how in a few instances the overflow of wells irrigated tracts of grain, and that such tracts furnished abundant crops while all other fields were blighted. It was stated that the rise in value of land if water security prevailed would be from $10 to $40 per acre. The president of the Agricultural College at Brookings estimated the immediate rise in the James River Valley alone at $20 per acre. Ten dollars was given as the present value of farm land per acre. With summer security of water each acre would be worth $30. That would be an increase of $140,000,000 in one section alone. It will be unnecessary on that basis to make a calculation for the 35,000,000 acres now occupied or held by individuals, as it would be so large as to prevent belief. Yet the James River estimate given is not too high. Still the people are, as pioneers, too poor as yet to undertake the work of defining and indicating the hydrographic supplies or the most profitable manner of using and storing them. This once done by the General Government, as they claim should be the case, there would be no difficulty, it is declared, of obtaining all the capital needed for the work of development and construction. Your committee agrees with this view.

WATER STORAGE PROBLEMS IN MONTANA.

The new State of Montana, with its 93,349,200 acres of territory, is traversed from east to west by the line of the Northern Pacific road, enabling the committee to carefully examine the most important tillable valley-that of the Yellowstone-in the State; also to have the opportunity of inspecting the capacity of the famous Bitter Root Valley in the extreme northwest section, for the raising of fine fruits, and at Bozeman, in the Gallatin Valley, to see the effects of irrigation on quite an extended scale. Montana is not only one of the three largest States -the others being Texas and California-but it is without question the best watered one west of the one hundredth meridian. It is heavily timbered also; its pastoral area is great, and according to the estimate of Statistician Dodge, of the Department of Agriculture, its tillable area is not less than 32.9 per cent., or close to one-third of the total.

The river courses that drain the central basin of this land find their beginnings in the sources of the Upper Missouri, with its great tributaries of the Yellowstone, Gallatin, Jefferson, Madison, and a score

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more important streams that all head in and receive their primal supply from the precipitation and drainage of the upper Rocky Mountain ranges. The valleys are usually narrow and long. The Yellowstone is an example, presenting as it does a tillable valley or bottom area of about 400 miles in length, with an average width of not to exceed 3 miles; in all about 780,000 acres. Such streams, large or small, usually present similar features of deep, narrow valleys, in which the waters appear to be slowly but steadily eroding deeper channels; then comes a precipitous rise to the mesa or bench land of from 25 to 100 or more feet in height. The mesas will widen their sections of the several hydrographic basins to from 8 to 12 miles in width. The secondary table-land or plateau is then reached by steep ascent, making them often as high as from 600 to 1,000 feet above the bottom land. mesas and table-lands are every where covered with succulent grasses. They are found to be fertile in capacity, if water can be obtained. It is these facts that make Montana a typical region in which to conserve the waters by storage and subsequent distribution for purposes of irrigation.

These

The Yellowstone basin from a reclaimable area in the lower valley of 780,000 acres will rise rapidly under a system of scientific engineering to an agricultural capacity of from 3,000,000 to 8,000,000 acres. When storage shall be so advanced and distribution so systematized that the secondary table-lands may be reached and quickened, the largest area named will be readily compassed. Nor does this statement close the possibilities of the drainage or hydrographic basin of the Yellowstone. The tributary valleys found there, many of which are quite large, will furnish an additional 4,000,000 acres to the area of reclamation. This is illustrated in a report made by the authorities of Custer County, within which a large portion of the main Yellowstone Valley is located. That report gives the valley land area at 384,000 acres, and for fifteen other tributary valleys within the county, including the Tongue, Powder, Rosebud, and Otter, it gives their valley areas at 501,600 more acres.

The volume of water to be supplied from the Yellowstone alone is estimated by the same authority for use in the areas under consideration at 906,000 miner's inches per second, flowing under a 6-foot pressure. The testimony warrants the statement that the Yellowstone alone can furnish for irrigation purposes some 4,000,000 miner's inches. With proper storage this may be greatly increased, perhaps doubled. The wisdom of the policy which reserved as a national park the wonderland in which the Yellowstone finds its ample sources may yet be proven in ways heretofore unexpected. The storage of its quickening waters will be greatly simplified by the inability of speculative occupiers of the public lands to exploit those valuable sources. Hundreds of millions of dollars may yet be added to the nation's wealth as a consequence of the National Park reservation.

The Yellowstone is taken as an illustration of a fact impressed upon your committee by the whole of the investigation it has pursued, viz, that the earlier or primal attempts at irrigation are decidedly wasteful and often provocative of contention, disorder, and litigation. The val ley or bottom lands, though the most readily reclaimable by simple local ditches, are seldom, perhaps never, the most desirable for farming purposes. It is always the warm red loams and soils of the mesa and table lands that will furnish the largest crops as a return for industry. It is on these benches, open to the sun, made up of the most fertilizing components and readily washed by water of alkali salts, that the West& Rep. 928

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ern farmer will in the not distant future, wherever water is accessible, make from his occupation a return almost as certain and controllable as does to day the carder of wool and the weaver of cloth. In the open laboratory of nature the earth and sun will aid, not hinder, man when regulating for himself a secure supply of water; he will from seed-time to harvest find a sufficient reward for labor, skill, and investment.

In the careful report for the State, made by the Montana Society of Civil Engineers, which will be found in the testimony taken, the following table of counties and reclaimable areas are presented as an approximate estimate:

Other statistics place the total area actually cultivated last year at less than 400,000 acres. The total given meaus all that is now occupied and used for farm purposes, grazing as well as tillage. The present year will see about 800,000 acres under cultivation by irrigation, and as much more "under ditch," that is within access to water supply thereby. No cultivation of the soil is possible in Montana without irrigation. Without ample storage of water the reclaimable area will be a limited one; with ample storage it will rise, according to different witnesses and reports, from 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 acres. The witnesses unite in declaring that with irrigation an acre of ground in Montana will exceed in productive value from 3 to 5 acres in the humid or rain fall States. The witnesses were from Virginia to Nova Scotia, and from New York to eastern Kansas. The average production per acre is estimated as follows: Wheat, 35 bushels; oats, 50; barley, 45; corn, 28; alfalfa, from 4 to 6 tons. The percentage of productive capacity for Montana per acre may be stated as follows:

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The number of farms are 1,519, the percentage of agriculturists 20, and the average value of land is a little less than $8 per acre. During the past ten fiscal years 6,904,461 acres of public lands have been disposed of in Montana, of which total 5,304,778 acres have been settled upon, sold, or patented during the past four fiscal years ending June 30, 1889.

The statistics presented as to irrigation ditches were very imperfect. But from such as were presented it appears that there were in 1869 of mining ditches 287 miles, constructed at a cost of $806,500. The present extent, including these, as many have been used for irrigation purposes also, is now estimated at 1,000 miles. There are now partially or wholly completed the following larger or district systems, constructed for rental investment by corporations:

A large majority of witnesses concede that under a proper system of irrigation, storage, and distribution land now worth but little beyond the Government price of $1.25 will rise rapidly to $20 and $30 per acre. The testimony was unanimous in favor of liberal appropriatious for the purpose of rapidly executing a proper hydrographic survey of the arid region. It was urged by several witnesses that the General Governmeut should go further and appropriate money for the construction of at least the main reservoir works, which the engineer's surveys may indicate as necessary. The headwaters of the interstate rivers should, it was suggested by some, be made like the Yellowstone Park, national reservations, in order to hold for the public benefit only the water sources therein. All witnesses in Montana declared in favor of considering the natural waters as public property, inalienable from the land and to be used, under public control, for beneficial purposes. It was the general opinion also that as water was an absolute quality in land values, therefore the General Government as controlling the public lands should of necessity feel obliged to point out at least the way by which the needed water could be obtained. It was asserted by all that the settlers were too poor to either do the needed work or to offer inducements sufficient to capital to enter on the construction necessary.

WHAT SETTLERS SAY OF FOREST PROTECTION.

A most interesting, though incidental, feature of Montana and other northwest testimony, brought out by the extended forest fires that were raging, was the general hostility felt towards the present system of se cret land-office agents. It was asserted on all sides that the timber lands should be retained permanently as public property, that those in charge ought to be known to residents, that rules and regulations

should be adopted to effect an honest use of timber by the settlers, and it was also assumed that the resident population in and adjacent to our timber areas in the West could be relied upon, if treated with fairness, to aid the General Government in any reasonable policy adopted to prevent destruction of our timber lands by fire and depredation. These views were expressed all through the arid region wherever the question was broached. Your committee was struck with the earnest feeling manifested on this important subject and trust that legislative action may yet adequately embody this public expectation.

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS OF NEW STATES.

In the constitutions adopted for the State of North Dakota as well as Montana, the aroused and increasing public interest in irrigation is shown by the incorporation of provisions placing the natural waters under State control for their beneficial regulation and distribution. In Montana also the committee were given testimony from different sources concerning the need of changing the present systems of public land survey and distribution. Witnesses agreed on the need of reducing the homestead and in considering that with irrigation 80 or even 40 acres were sufficient. It was also suggested that, with the increase of agriculture such action would bring, the large cattle-ranches must also disappear, stock raising and breeding farms taking their place. Some of the large ranch-owners expressed themselves in support of this policy. Evidence was given showing the existence in Montana of artesian water belts. In the Yellowstone Valley there are a number of such wells, some sixty-five being found in and around Miles City. There are wells also at IIelena and elsewhere. In the Lower Milk River Valley, now being opened by a new railroad, it is claimed that water in abundance is found at very moderate depths, which rises rapidly almost to the surface. The northwestern section of Montana is already famous for its early and fine fruits. Indeed, all the witnesses interested in cultivating land declared that for the growth of temperate fruits of all kinds the new State was unsurpassed. The orchard seen at Missoula gave warrant to this claim for Montana.

RECLAMATION CONDITIONS OF THE FAR NORTHWEST.

The States of Washington and Oregon present most interesting topographic and hydrographic features. In entering the first named State by the Northern Pacific Railroad, your committee had the opportunity of seeing the effect, on an area well within the arid region, of the extensive mountain lakes found in northwestern Montana and northwestern Washington, as also on a considerable section of northern Idaho. The regional aridity is subdued to a considerable degree. The extreme eastern quarter or third of Washington from north to south may properly be classified as sub-humid, while the central portion clear to the eastern foot-hills of the Cascades approaches more nearly to a general arid character. Washington, from 117° to 121° of west longitude, or four degrees, will be found a section in which the storage and distribution of water, while not at all times and places therein an absolute necessity, will always need such facilities and find them to greatly enhance its land values and industrial progress.

Entering midway of the western boundary the Northern Pacific Railroad gives the traveler occasion for seeing the character of a great area almost wholly unreclaimed, which the mesa or table-land of the