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Irrigation would command enthusiasm where railways would only provoke opposition, and the French could find no surer way of winning the hearts of the people than by coping at once with the agricultural water supply, in order to provide against such years of famine as the present, and worse that are well remembered. That would be a form of "pacific penetration," to which none could object.
"And don't you realize that this is the answer to the solar power problem? Why, mirrors and selenium are, at best, ten per cent efficient! Think of big pumping stations on the Sahara! All that heat, all that need for power, for irrigation!" I paused a moment for effect. "Farnsworth, this can change the very shape of the Earth!" Farnsworth seemed to be lost in thought.
Until they do, they must occupy, even in their own eyes, somewhat the position of adventurers. They cannot hope to secure the respect of the industrious sectaries who own and till the soil, and who are taught to count them aliens and persecutors. Irrigation is here the only means of successful agriculture. It involves great outlay of capital and labor, and creates great fixedness of tenure.
More than forty thousand have registered already, and there are three days more before the books close. The government circulars describing the land say there are eight thousand homesteads, all told six hundred of them suitable for agriculture once they are brought under irrigation, the rest grazing and mineral land.
In general, it may be said that irrigation is employed only in the seasons when the evaporating power of the sun and the capacity of the air for absorbing humidity are greatest, or, in other words, that the soil is nowhere artificially watered except when it is so dry that little moisture would be evaporated from it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated ground is so much added to the evaporable surface of the country.
There appears to be no division of opinion upon the major principles of the compact, but difficulty in separating contentions to methods of development from the discussion of it. It is imperative that flood control be undertaken for California and Arizona. preparation made for irrigation, for power, and for domestic water. Some or all of these questions are combined in every proposed development.
It does not make a particle of difference, if the trees are grown well and matured well. Overirrigated trees or trees growing on land naturally moist may be equally bad. Excessively large trees and stunted trees are both bad; with irrigation you may be more likely to get the first kind; without it you are more likely to get the latter.
A Mexican friend, who worked for The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company, had overheard a conversation between the Company Manager and the chief engineer, who were together inspecting the work on the Central Main Canal. Dropping into his quaint English, Pablo repeated what his friend had told him.
These prospects seem to afford every justification of Government advances in reclamation and irrigation. Contemplating the inevitable and desirable increase of population, there is another phase of reclamation full worthy of consideration. There are 79,000,000 acres of swamp and cut-over lands which may be reclaimed and made as valuable as any farm lands we possess.
Indeed, it does not require any great knowledge of agriculture to see that a country like this, a lofty table-land, dry and barren, with no market handy, or chance of irrigation, is a wretched poor farming country. Hence the pity it seems of wiping out the burghers.
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