"Irrigation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would get any notion of British enterprise or British energy must go afield—to the Upper Nile and Equatorial Africa, to divers parts of Asia and Australia. He cannot see the Assouan dam, the Cape to Cairo Railway, the Indian irrigation works, from the Carlton Hotel, any more than a foreigner can measure the destiny of the American people by dining ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... his personal fortune must first be secured. Without money one can do nothing. Cecil Rhodes had had the natural wealth of Rhodesia at his back. McKeith had set himself the task of opening up the fine country out West, which he knew only needed a system of irrigation by Artesian Bores to defy drought, the squatters curse. That object once accomplished—he gave himself with luck and good seasons five or six years—there would be nothing to stop his becoming a patriot ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... methods of irrigation, draining, engines, wind-mills, pumps, farm wagons, all kinds of fruit, sugar canes, vegetable sugar, candy stores, confectionery displays, vegetables of all kinds that wuz ever hearn on, some on 'em of such ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... know how that is, Flix, and we haven't time to investigate the matter. The interior of the island is mostly composed of a great plain, which was once famous for its crops of grain; but the system of irrigation which prevailed has been discontinued, and its fertility no longer exists. In a scarcity of rain five years ago there was almost a ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... south-west and west, and enters Sedjestan some four days march from Douchak; making a detour around the mountains, it finally forms a lake. At Peldalek, which we visited, it is about 1200 feet in width, and very deep; the water is very good. The country is cultivated by irrigation for half a mile on either side; then the desert begins, and rises in perpendicular cliffs. The banks of the river abound in tamarind-trees and provide pasturage ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious instance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines and consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced by a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved cultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so forth. But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than to bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in directing and subduing ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... them. Each of these units stood in the middle of a wooded park some five miles square; no unit was much more or less than twenty miles from its nearest neighbor, and the land between was the uniform golden-brown of ripening grain, crisscrossed with the threads of irrigation canals and dotted here and there with sturdy farm-village buildings and tall, stacklike granaries. There were a few other ships in the air at the fifty-thousand-foot level, and below, swarms of small airboats darted back and forth on different levels, depending ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... form of periostitis the periosteum should be freely incised, followed either by continuous irrigation or frequent injection of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... soon as the square had been formed up again in order these were turned against the position the Arabs had now taken up in rear of their first line of defence. In the centre of the position they now occupied was a brick building, where an engine for pumping up water for irrigation purposes had formerly stood. The Arabs had loopholed the walls and surrounded the building with rifle-pits. Here they made a desperate resistance, until at last the doors were burst in and the building stormed. Several mud huts were ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... outbreak of the Sioux, in 1890 and 1891, Colonel Cody served at the head of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1895 Cody took up the development of Wyoming Valley by introducing irrigation. Not long afterward he became judge advocate general of the Wyoming ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... of Juan are entirely composed of white marble, in stratified slabs of five or six feet long by six or seven inches thick, all regularly cut and polished by nature. From this the inhabitants prepare an excellent lime, which they use in building bridges over the streams and canals of irrigation. Between the city of Mendoza and La Punta, on a low range of hills, there is a large stone pillar, 150 feet high and 12 feet diameter, called the giant, on which there are certain marks or inscriptions resembling Chinese ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... contributing to deforestation; soil erosion from overgrazing and poor cultivation methods (including slash-and-burn agriculture); desertification; loss of biodiversity; industrial pollution of water supplies used for drinking and irrigation ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... "Ashab al-Ziya'," the latter word mostly signifies estates consisting, strictly speaking of land under artificial irrigation. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... not seen for so long. It lay bare enough in the early winter—long stretches of stone-walled paddocks where the red soil showed through the sparse, native grass; steep, stony hillsides, with little sheep grazing on them—pygmies, after the great English sheep; oases of irrigation, with the deep green of lucerne growing rank among weed-fringed water-channels; and so on and on, past little towns and tiny settlements, and now and then a stop at some place of more importance. But Norah did not want the towns; she was homesick for the open country, for ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... change of motion in descent that almost involuntarily I took a few steps of a jig and uttered the first verses of "I Only Had Fifty Cents." Mosses and ferns by the billion covered every foot of the small plateau. There were no trees. The trail was a foot deep in water, like an irrigation ditch. One still might easily break one's neck. And I reflected that Pere Olivier crosses many times a year between Oomoa and Hanavave, in his black soutan and on his weary horse, in all weathers, alone; it is ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable, without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than lizards and horned toads. Why a homesteader should have chosen to locate there is a mystery. His reason for abandoning the place is glaringly obvious. Though failure be written in every angle and nook of the homestead, it is the failure of large-hearted ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Nile is to Egypt, the stream which flows here is to Biskra. By considerable labor it has been made to meander among the palms in numerous tiny canals, thus by an elaborate system of irrigation causing the barren soil of the desert to become fertile and bring forth fruit. Everywhere the little runlets are led round the very roots of the trees, for the palm, it is said, loves to have its head in the fire and its feet in the water. Here and there even a few cereals are extracted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... apt description, and so long as the great azequia is kept in repair and the system of irrigation which I have established is maintained it will remain a land of plenty and ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... year the Tonkawanda irrigation district was opened, he settled himself on a spur of San Jacinto where it plunges like a great dolphin in the green swell of the camissal, and throws up a lacy foam of chaparral along its sides. Below him, dotted over the flat reach of the mesa, the four square clearings of the Homesteaders ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... sixty more there was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless fertility of the soil—when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be made—with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow here—with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that anything could ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... up the subject of irrigation, there; they say that's what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians perfect ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... maintaining good roads. They will restrain and preserve the rain which comes down from heaven, making the barren places fertile, and the wet places dry. They will ornament the fountains with plantations and buildings, and provide water for irrigation at all seasons of the year. They will lead the streams to the temples and groves of the Gods; and in such spots the youth shall make gymnasia for themselves, and warm baths for the aged; there the rustic worn with toil will receive a kindly welcome, and be far better treated ...
— Laws • Plato
... they are no more than makeshifts, after all. He was modest enough about it, not having any special exploits to parade before their wondering eyes, but quite willing. His Western experiences being called for, he was soon telling, not of desert and cactus and irrigation, but of the people who had so taken ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... should be promoted by all legitimate means, and in high summer it will take water, liquid manure, and mulchings of rich stuff, to almost any extent, with advantage. The irrigation that suits the Kale will probably also suit the stolen crop, but irrigation is not good for Onions or Potatoes; where these crops are grown care must be exercised to bestow the fluid on the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the level of the lake, in gentle declivity, was a lawn of turf as fresh and green as that of the most beautiful English fields; this was a rare thing at the Antilles, and was due to underground irrigation which flowed from the lake and gave to this park a delightful freshness. From this lawn, ornamented by baskets of tropical flowers, opened a garden composed of large variegated shrubs, the slope of the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... serve the Arabs best by going to London, he'd consider it. The objection would be, though, that he'd have to make terms in advance with hog-financiers, who'd work through the Foreign Office to tie up all the oil and mine and irrigation concessions. If we tell him privately about your gold mine at Abu Kem he can ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... who visits Palestine in 1898 and then comes again in 1923 when he finds the Promised Land developed under Jewish influence. Its territory lies East and West of the Jordan. The dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the irrigation engineers. Technology had given a new form to labor, a new social and economic system had been created which is described as "mutualistic," a huge cooperative, a mediate form between individualism and collectivism. Haifa had become a world city. Around the Holy City of Jerusalem, modern suburbs ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... were shown a group of Mrs. Holmes' pets—several young rabbits and a kitten, romping together in the utmost good fellowship. The rabbits had been rescued from a watery grave in an irrigation ditch and carefully nursed back to life. We helped her search for a lame wild duck that had spurned the offer of a good home with civilized ducklings, and had taken to the sage-brush. Mrs. Holmes' love of wild animals, however, failed to include the bald-headed ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... how four fifths of the labor of men was utterly wasted by the mutual warfare, the lack of organization and concert among the workers. Seeking to make the matter very plain, I instanced the case of arid lands where the soil yielded the means of life only by careful use of the watercourses for irrigation. I showed how in such countries it was counted the most important function of the government to see that the water was not wasted by the selfishness or ignorance of individuals, since otherwise there would be famine. To this end its use was strictly regulated and systematized, and individuals of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the Fathers had a system of irrigation by means of ditches, traces of which may be seen to this day in the sites where stood many of the old mission orchards. The fruits from these good Fathers gardens were the fairest and most luscious that California has ever seen, none of our lovely ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... Western Australia, but had never been seen over such tremendous tracts and giving off such colours which, probably due to atmospheric influences, had very distinctive beauty. Here and there the oases, and the irrigation areas, were marked by palm trees or by crops of a vivid green hue. There was also seen much that at once directed attention to the fact that the land was one famed in biblical history. The costumes of the natives; the flat-roofed mud-coloured dwellings; the old fashioned wells, the ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... Australia have figured largely in the iron and coal industries, in the irrigation projects, in the manufacturing activities, and in the working of the gold mines. But they have likewise distinguished themselves in other fields of endeavor. Prominent on the beadroll of Australian fame stand the names of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), founder of the Nation ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... everybody knows, the Transcontinental Railway has practically created two-thirds of the States through which it passes—made them out of whole cloth. Where you left sage-brush and bare hills and unfenced cattle ranges a dozen years ago you will now find irrigation, tilled farms, orchards, rich mines—development everywhere, with a rapidly growing population to help it along. To make all this possible, the railroad took a chance; it was a mighty long chance, and somebody ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... and grazing purposes. In New Mexico, for example, it has long been thought that certain immense areas must always be comparatively useless because of their natural aridity. But engineers have just completed plans for tapping the Rio Grande with a canal and thus bringing under irrigation a tract some ten miles wide and a hundred and fifty long, containing nearly a million acres. The addition of so vast an area to the arable land of the Territory means, of course, a large increase in the productive resources of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... never had much of a chance, because he liked to use the earth of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and earthworks for his toy soldiers. And the seeds of vegetables rarely come to much in a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes of war and irrigation. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... with slaves! There are some narrow strips of tillable land on the borders of the rivers; but the rivers themselves dry up before midsummer is gone. All that the people can do in that region is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation. And who expects to see a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... it does make a great difference whether the young men and women of our day give their conscious and intelligent allegiance to Christianity or hold aloof in misunderstanding. Without them the Christian movement will mark time on old issues. With them it will dig new irrigation channels and string the wires ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... thoroughly as to elicit the astonishment of the Spaniards. At every few miles taverns or hotels were established for the accommodation of travellers. Humboldt pronounced these Peruvian roads "among the most useful and stupendous works ever executed by man." They built aqueducts for purposes of irrigation some of which were five hundred miles long. They constructed magnificent bridges of stone, and had even invented suspension bridges thousands of years before they were introduced into Europe. They had, both in Peru and ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... wells for the supply of the vegetable gardens, where onions, tomatoes, melons, etc., are grown. It contains, too, numerous young palm groves of recent plantation. Immediately beyond the point to which irrigation extends, the barren ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... fail to find there an exhaustless source of enjoyment. Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two where there was but one is both a profit and a pleasure. And not grass alone. but soils, seeds, and seasons—hedges, ditches, and fences—draining, droughts, and irrigation—plowing, hoeing, and harrowing—reaping, mowing, and threshing—saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them—implements, utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and how to improve them—hogs, horses, and cattle—sheep, goats and ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... to think how sick I am of it all! I want a long bath of silence and recollection and repose. I want to fill my cistern again with my own thoughts and my own dreams, instead of pumping up the muddy waters of irrigation. I don't think my colleagues are like that. I sate with half-a-dozen of them last night at supper. They were full of all they meant to do. Two of the most energetic were going off to play golf, and the chief ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... civilization. These terraces are extended year by year as the population increases, by the inhabitants of each village working in concert under the direction of their chiefs; and it is perhaps by this system of village culture alone, that such extensive terracing and irrigation has been rendered possible. It was probably introduced by the Brahmins from India, since in those Malay countries where there is no trace of a previous occupation by a civilized people, the terrace system is unknown. I first saw this mode of cultivation in Bali and Lombock, and, as I shall ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... through the green trees and the garden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing at her red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did they cross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of the leaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation into Arizona's domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground—dead cattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought, killed in ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... then, for the application of these four ways of irrigation by which the garden is to be maintained; for without water it must fail. The comparison is to my purpose, and it seems to me that by the help of it I shall be able to explain, in some measure, the four degrees of prayer ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... than fifty yards wide, flowed like molten sapphire between unseen banks. As the pale stars died, thin rays of liquid silver touched the surface of a lake to westward, seen through a rift between purple hills. The green of irrigation beyond the river to eastward shone like square-cut emeralds, and southward the desert took to itself all imaginable ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... rainy season, and flood the land; as the waters subside, they leave behind a fertilizing mud, in the same manner as the Nile, but during the rest of the year they give but little if any help in the way of irrigation. The rainy season, although generally occurring from October to February, is not, however, to be absolutely depended upon; thus it is recorded that in 1330, during the reign of Hugo of Lusignan, the rainfall was so heavy and the rivers flooded ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the life-process guides education in its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers, specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of instruction includes the recitation ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... accepting, tolerating, putting up with things as they are, a maximum of passive acquiescence, and a minimum of active control, of subjection to use. A civilized people enters upon the scene. It also adapts itself. It introduces irrigation; it searches the world for plants and animals that will flourish under such conditions; it improves, by careful selection, those which are growing there. As a consequence, the wilderness blossoms as a rose. The savage is merely habituated; ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... by savages, they were over a thousand miles from the habitation of a white man. They had pitched their tents on an alkali plain that had never been tilled; not a blade of grass grew in the soil and this in a climate where not a drop of rain or even a cloud appeared for six months in the year. Irrigation had never been tried, and the whole scheme was an experiment, the failure of which would have been fatal to the settlement. The first winter was spent in their wagons and in tents, while their subsistence ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... his fellow-workers made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. The soil is rocky and barren, the hill-sides whitened with mountain streams, the more fertile spots isolated and difficult of access. An elaborate system of irrigation has now clothed the valleys with rich pastures, the river turns a dozen wheels, and every available inch of soil has been turned to account. The cottages with orchards and flower-gardens are trim and comfortable. The place in verity is ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... water ends, the aspect of the country changes, not gradually, but suddenly; on the one hand absolute barrenness, on the other exuberant vegetation; and wherever irrigation brings a drop of water, plants spring up, and the sterile dust becomes fertile soil. The contrast is most striking. We had passed Lake Mareotis, and on either side of the railroad stretched fields of doora or ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... hundred per cent, certainty of results. Last fall, when every bit of soil about my place was ash dry, and I had occasion to start immediately some seeds that were late in reaching me, my necessity mothered the following invention, an adaptation of the principle of sub-irrigation. To have filled the flats in the ordinary way would not have done, as it would have been impossible ever to wet the soil through without making a solid mud cake of it, in which seeds would have stood about as good a chance of doing anything as though not watered ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... every ten acres. If I could develop water for irrigation in the San Gregorio valley, I could raise alfalfa and lot-feed a couple ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... water is so low. When there has been much rain, there is quite a flood here. Those little gardens and fields there are the most fertile spot round Jerusalem, because there is so much irrigation here." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... parts of the world famine raged, and in many regions there was plague.... The plains of north India, which had become more and more dependent for the general welfare on the railways and that great system of irrigation canals which the malignant section of the patriots had destroyed, were in a state of peculiar distress, whole villages lay dead together, no man heeding, and the very tigers and panthers that preyed upon the emaciated survivors crawled ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... brain. On the other hand, the brain is known to be imperfectly supplied with blood during sleep, and cannot therefore be at full work. It is probable enough, from hydraulic analogies, that imperfect irrigation would lead to partial irrigation, and therefore to suppression of action in some parts of the brain, and that this is really the case seems to be proved by the absence ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... especially suitable for growing cotton, the most extensively-used clothing material. Flowers grow luxuriantly and beautifully whenever cultivated and watered. A few years ago when writing on the "White Australia" question, I stated that with high culture, water irrigation, and scientific irrigation, Australia was capable of supporting 400 millions of inhabitants. A high literary authority, in reviewing the book, remarked that this seemed like a "gross exaggeration"; but probably he had not thought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... new year's day, must pay tithes for the past year, and they are allowed for use in the Sabbatical year. Otherwise they are forbidden in the Sabbatical year, and must be tithed for the coming year, and so also (the produce) of a rain-field(46) from which the water of irrigation is withheld on two occasions." The words of R. Maier. But the Sages ...
— Hebrew Literature
... waste. potable water - water that is drinkable, safe to be consumed. salination - the process through which fresh (drinkable) water becomes salt (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render soil incapable of supporting crops. siltation - occurs when water channels and reservoirs become clotted with silt and mud, a side effect of deforestation and soil erosion. slash-and-burn agriculture - a rotating cultivation ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... caught by rather a clever arrangement with horsehair nooses attached to a string, which is stretched over the ditches and canals used for irrigation, and so close to the water that the ducks are compelled when swimming under the string to stretch out their necks, when they are easily caught ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Mr. Ames had moved upon the bench, he had been promised that the new canal should come high enough to bring water to his land; but a new survey had been made which had left his farm far above the irrigation limit. Mr. Ames had died before he could move his family; and they had been compelled to remain in their temporary hut these four long, hard years. Rupert had tried to farm without water. A little wheat and alfalfa had been raised, which ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... enables the crops to flourish with less water; and, on the other hand, a greater supply of water will enable the crops to flourish with a less supply of plant-food. The market-gardeners should look into this question of irrigation." ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... shall take place. Being arrested at this point by the chain, it becomes primed, and sinks, and the water escapes. When the water is exhausted, the siphon rises anew in order to again sink; and this goes on as long as the period of irrigation lasts. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... name but he's got wan all shtraight an' proper. He's that kind. They call him the Seer because av his talk av the great things that will be doin' in this country av no rain at all whin ignorant savages like yersilf learn how to use the wather that's in the rivers for irrigation. I've heard him say mesilf that hundreds av thousands av acres av these big deserts will be turned into farms, an' all that be what he calls 'Reclamation.' 'Twas for that some danged yellow-legged surveyor give him the name, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... abundant stream was diverted from this river at the spot now called Negub, and conveyed at first by a tunnel excavated in the rock, and thence by an open canal to the foot of the great terrace: at this point the flow of the water was regulated by dams, and the surplus was utilised for irrigation** purposes by means of openings cut in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Wilcox. A handbook for the practical application of water in the production of crops. A complete treatise on water supply, canal construction, reservoirs and ponds, pipes for irrigation purposes, flumes and their structure, methods of applying water, irrigation of field crops, the garden, the orchard and vineyard; windmills and pumps, appliances and contrivances. Profusely, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... forces irritated him: the waterfall, lost without leaving its energy anywhere; the ravine, which might be transformed into an irrigation reservoir; the river, which was flowing gently without fertilizing the fields; the land around the hermitage, which might have been converted into a park, with a bright, gay schoolhouse; all these things that could be done and were ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... his companion. "I change at the next junction. No, the nearest I ever come to working in the oil fields is filling tanks for the cars in my father's garage. But o' course I know oil—the streets run with it down our way, and they use it to flush the irrigation system. And I've seen some of the raw deals these sharpers put through—doing widows and orphans out of their land. Makes you have a mighty small opinion of the ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... as the desert cannot become productive until it receives the waters of irrigation, so the arid soul, if it is to become fruitful, must ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... roll up the Yellowstone from Livingston to Gardiner you may note a little ranch-house on the west of the track with its log stables, its corral, its irrigation ditch, and its alfalfa patch of morbid green. It is a small affair, for it was founded by the handiwork of one honest man, who with his wife and small boy left Pennsylvania, braved every danger of the plains, and secured this claim in the late '80's. Old man Cree—he ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... At Rumano he raised a church to S. Peter, and erected buildings of public utility, which on his death he bequeathed to the society of the Misericordia in that town. All the places of his jurisdiction owed to him such benefits as good water, new walls, and irrigation works. In addition to these munificent foundations must be mentioned the Basella, or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he established not far from Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of his beloved daughter Medea. Last, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... believe that the original Tammuz typified the vivifying waters; he writes: "Since, in Babylonia as in Egypt, the fertility of the soil depended upon irrigation, it is but natural to expect that the youthful god who represents the birth and death of nature, would represent the beneficent waters which flooded the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in the late winter, and which ebbed away, and nearly disappeared, in the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Kansas. A wide belt stretching westward from the one-hundredth meridian to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains is arid land. It includes parts of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Although the rainfall here is mostly too light to grow corn and wheat without irrigation, these dry plains have sufficient growth to support great herds of sheep and cattle, and supply us with a large part of our beef. Cattle by the hundred thousand feed on these vast ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... of ice bags or cold water by bandages, douching with a hose, or irrigation with dripping water, contracts the blood vessels, acts as a sedative to the nerves, and lessens the vitality of a part; it consequently prevents the tissue change ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... a combination of castor oil and salol, in emulsion, in small doses,—to which a small quantity of opium may be added or withheld according to the frequency of the movements,—with an occasional colon irrigation, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... these considerations, that the conversion of circulating capital into fixed, whether by railways, or manufactories, or ships, or machinery, or canals, or mines, or works of drainage and irrigation, is not likely, in any rich country, to diminish the gross produce or the amount of employment for labor. There is hardly any increase of fixed capital which does not enable the country to contain eventually a larger circulating ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... to Leonard's mechanical contrivances. The Squire, ever eagerly bent on improvements, had brought an engineer to inspect the lad's system of irrigation, and the engineer had been greatly struck by the simple means by which a very considerable technical difficulty had been overcome. The neighboring farmers now called Leonard "Mr. Fairfield," and invited him on equal terms, to their houses. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... for purposes of rice cultivation went on vigorously during Suinin's reign. More than eight hundred ponds and aqueducts are said to have been constructed by order of the sovereign for irrigation uses throughout the provinces. It would seem, too, that the practice of formally consulting Court officials about administrative problems had its origin at this time. No definite organization for the purpose was yet created, but it became customary to convene distinguished scions ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... tills his field, breaking up the clods of earth into fine mould, penetrable to air and rain; he sows his seed, carefully covering it, for fear of birds and the wind; he waters the seed-laden earth, turning the little rills from the irrigation tank now this way and that, removing obstacles from the channels, until the even How of water vitalizes the whole field. And so the plants germinate and grow, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But it is not the husbandman ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... coolies from China to Australia, Natal, or the Feegee Islands, to raise his cotton and help put down Secession and export-duties, or whether he shall give a new stimulus to India cotton by railways and irrigation. He seems to prosper in all his business; for the "Edinburgh Review" reports him worth six thousand millions of pounds, at least,—a very comfortable provision ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... high cultivation, the crops abundant, the water always more than sufficient both for the purposes of irrigation and for machinery, which A—— considers equal to anything he has seen in Jamaica. They produce annually from thirty to fifty thousand arrobas of sugar. The labourers are free Indians, and are paid from two and a half to six and a half reals per day. I believe that ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... five sugar-plantations, some of which are now successful, though they were not always so. Success has been attained by a resolute expenditure of money in irrigation ditches, which have made the land yield constant and remunerative crops. But I could see here, as elsewhere, that close and careful management—the eye of the master and the hand of the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... the steward unceremoniously turned us out of our berths soon after sunrise, we were running down upon the Great Salt Lake, bounded by the white Wahsatch ranges. Along its shores, by means of irrigation, Mormon industry has compelled the ground to yield fine crops of hay and barley; and we passed several cabins, from which, even at that early hour, Mormons, each with two or three wives, were going forth to their day's work. The women were ugly, and their shapeless blue dresses hideous. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... that thus arose became in time strongly organized; it employed slave labor in crushing the hard quartz, sinking pits, and carrying underground galleries; it carried out a system of irrigation and built stone buildings and fortifications. There exists to-day many remains of these building operations in the Kalahari desert and in northern Rhodesia. Five hundred groups, covering over an area of one hundred and fifty thousand square miles, lie ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... being irrigated, had been somewhat affected by the surrounding water, for the spherical glands were not quite uniform in appearance; and a few of the oblong ones were brown, with their utricles shrunk. Of the oblong glands, those which were before colourless, became brown in 3 hrs. 12 m. after irrigation, with their utricles slightly shrunk. The spherical glands did not become brown, but their contents seemed changed in appearance, and after 23 hrs. still more changed and granular. Most of the oblong glands were now dark brown, but their utricles were ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... of all the martyrs, rebels and revolters who have attempted to turn the current of this river has tinted its waters. That its ultimate end is irrigation, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... stone-cutting in Mexico and Egypt. Prickly Pears. Temple-pyramids of Teotihuacan. Sacrifice of Spaniards. Old Mexico. Market of Antiquities. Police. Bull-dogs. Accumulation of Alluvium. Tezcotzinco. Ancient baths and bridge. Salt and salt-pans. Fried flies'-eggs. Water-pipes. Irrigation. Agriculture in Mexico. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel." Some French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns, and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English grass seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation. In Bengal there is a very beautiful species of grass called Doob grass, (Panicum Dactylon,) but it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them, and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that "the camomile ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... and send forward a fatigue-party to dig out the jackal. When he appeared—and he usually did appear in a hurry—we gave him a couple of minutes' start and then tally-ho! and away after him over the plain. We had, of course, no fences to leap, but there were deep nullahs and irrigation dykes wide enough to give one something to think about. Moreover, the jackals were astonishingly speedy; they would twist and turn and double on their tracks for half an hour at a stretch, and they were game to ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... irrigation is practiced, clover seeds may be sown at any time that may be desired, from the early spring until the early autumn. The ability to apply water when it is needed insures proper germination in the seed and vigor in the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... published, because they fatten on the profits made by selling lands to the gullible "tender feet" from the east, who, when they have bought these farms at enormous prices, find to their utter discouragement, that they must also buy water for irrigation from monopolists, at ruinous rates, else the soil is worthless. Here as nowhere else is illustrated the truth of the Scriptural adage: "To him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... not laughing and chattering, or singing, or even dancing, in the right Andalusian fashion, but stood silent in statuesque poses from which they seemed in no haste to stir for filling their water jars and jugs. The Moorish tradition of irrigation confronting one in all the travels and histories as a supreme agricultural advantage which the Arabs took back to Africa with them, leaving Spain to thirst and fry, lingers here in the circles sunk round the orange trees and fed by little channels. The trees ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Creek had risen in the last few days, since the professor crossed, caused, it was learned later, by the diversion into the creek of a larger stream by some irrigation ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... been fighting down the feeling of thirst for the last two hours. Do you know," he added, after a refreshing and yet a tantalising irrigation of the mouth and throat, "I have been haunted by a sort of waking dream while plodding on in silence this afternoon. There was an old man who used to bring fruit and ginger-beer to the cricket-field at my school, and he has ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... until we took up the task of life. In another place you found the great collection made in Egypt by Lepsius. The visitor stood within the facsimile of a temple on the banks of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped columns were processions of dark figures at the loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as soldiers, or mourners at funerals,—exact copies of the original delineations. There were sphinx and obelisk, coffins of kings, mummies of priest and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in which they were buried. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... terraced gardens, walled in with rows of stones. These gardens have today greatly diminished in size, as compared with the ancient outlines, and only that portion which is occupied by a grove of peach trees is now under cultivation, although there is plenty of water for the successful irrigation of a much larger tract of land than the gardens now cover.[103] Judging from their size, many of the peach trees are very old, although they still bear their annual crop of fruit. Everything indicates, as the legends relate, that ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... regiment, and after a considerable opposition from the enemy, I succeeded in forcing him to retire some distance; but not without disputing every inch of ground, which was well calculated for resistance, being intersected at every few yards, by banks and water courses raised for the purpose of irrigation, and covered with date trees. The next morning the riflemen, supported by the pickets, were again called into play, and soon established their position within three and four hundred yards of the town, which with the base of the hill, was so completely surrounded, as to render the escape of any ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... with pasture and forest, seen in the distance of the great valley as a promontory of sweet verdure, along which the central stream passes with an influence of blessing, submitting itself to the will of the husbandman for irrigation, and of the mechanist for toil; now nourishing the pasture, and now grinding the corn, of the land which it has first ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... overflowing of the Nile, and he cuts many canals to lead the water to his fields, and builds dams to retain it when the river goes down. But the overflowing of the river, even when helped by canals and dams, is not enough for the proper irrigation of the land, and the Egyptian farmers and field-labourers have to spend much of their time in raising water from the river, or the canals, and distributing it over the fields, especially upon the higher ground, which the annual flood does not reach. Along the banks of the river, especially in ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... sometimes to 67 degrees, but people in the boats tell me it is still cold at night on the river. Up here, only a stone's-throw from it, it is warm all night. I fear the loss of cattle has suspended irrigation to a fearful extent, and that the harvests of Lower Egypt of all kinds will be sadly scanty. The disease has not spread above Minieh, or very slightly; but, of course, cattle will rise in price here also. Already food is getting dearer here; meat is 4.5 piastres—7d.—the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the trincheras, were originally built by the same race. Some of the terraces were, no doubt, erected as a protection of the crop against enemies and wild animals; but it is impossible to think that they were intended for irrigation dams, though we did see water running through some, coming out of a marsh. Still less likely is it that they had been used ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... itself has a population of about one thousand souls, and was first settled in 1850, by colonists from Chihuahua. All land in this portion of the territory is cultivated by irrigation; and, as this was the first time Hal had ever seen it practiced to any extent, he asked permission to remain behind in town a little while, to witness the operation. Ned also expressed a desire to see it, and, after consulting Jerry, I assented to their request, believing with him, "that they'd find ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... hand, the illustrious general did not dream merely of the momentary conquest of Egypt; he wished to restore to that country its ancient splendour; he wished to extend its cultivation, to improve its system of irrigation, to create new branches of industry, to open to commerce numerous outlets, to stretch out a helping hand to the unfortunate inhabitants, to rescue them from the galling yoke under which they had groaned for ages, in a word, to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... irrigation plants, the idea would be just a toy here," replied Roger. "There's bound to be water here, if we go deep enough. You tell me the lower levels of the mines up in the ranges on both sides ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... for irrigation—was of such width that a horse could not well leap over it, and deep enough to render it no very pleasant matter for a horseman to get into. It therefore required both skill and daring to accomplish the feat. The animal was to arrive upon the bank of the canal ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... certain rights to its use; and these riparian rights, as they are called, have been established by precedent for centuries. But, in the State of Colorado, it was found that the water in the streams was of such value for irrigation that the old system of permitting private ownership of these riparian rights led to grave abuses. The State Constitution, therefore, declares that all water in running streams is the inalienable property of the whole people, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... and forming immediately a lovely natural pool, under high, tree-grown banks. This is still exactly as it was in the ancient days. No water company has robbed it, and besides "The King's Pool," which is the old name of the water, there are overflowing streams in every direction, now used in careful irrigation for the growth of watercress, one of the prettiest of all forms of minor farming. Fertile land, shelter from gales by the overhanging hill, great trees, and abundance of ever-flowing water, are ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... capital of Peru, proved an interesting place. It was about eight miles inland and was built on an arid plain about five hundred feet above sea level. Yet, though it was on what might be termed a desert, the place, by means of irrigation, had been ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... from the Bow River—far ahead of us. We are in the irrigation belt—and in the next few years thousands of people will settle here. Give the land water—the wheat follows! South and North, even now, the wheat is spreading and driving out the ranchers. Irrigation is the secret. We are mastering it! And you thought"—he looked ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... years, and since then the Grand Canal and the lakes between them have so impeded its natural course that it may be said to have no natural delta at all; to be dissipated in a dedalus of salt flats, irrigation channels, and marshes: hence it is not so obvious to us now why the whole coast-line was at the period we are now describing, when there was no Grand Canal, quite beyond the reach of Chinese colonization from the Yellow River valley: this was ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... and one to another; the strongest to dig and cut wood, and to build huts for the rest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out of skins; the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though their labours were thus naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked men would understand well enough that the speediest progress was to be made by helping each other,—not ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... forty-nine. And truer. Opportunities are greater, the need of men is more urgent. Right now, right to-day, I am looking for a man, a young man, who knows a thing or two about engineering, who can build bridges and cut irrigation ditches and save me money doing it." He threw out his hands. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Book; The American Farm Book; or, a Compend of American Agriculture, being a Practical Treatise on Soils, Manures, Draining, Irrigation, Grasses, Grain, Roots, Fruits, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar-Cane, Rice, and every staple product of the United States; with the best methods of Planting, Cultivating, and Preparation for Market. Illustrated by more than 100 engravings. By R. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... blood flow becomes greater in amount. Each part of the body regulates its supply of blood, the regulation being effected by means of nerves which control the tension of the muscle fibres. The circulation may be compared with an irrigation system in which the water supply of each particular field is regulated not by the engineer, but by an automatic device connected with the growing crop and responding to ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... the ears failed the same as the rest. Something may be done, without doubt, if one begins in time, but the relief seems strangely inadequate to the means often used. In rainless countries good crops are produced by irrigation, but here man can imitate in a measure the patience and bounty of Nature, and, with night to aid him, can make his thirsty fields drink, or rather can pour the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... valley, the mellow green of Peaceful's orchard was already taking to itself the vagueness of evening shadows. Nearer, the meadow of alfalfa and clover lay like a soft, green carpet of velvet, lined here and there with the irrigation ditches which kept it so. And in the center of the meadow, a small inclosure marked grimly the spot where lay the bones of old John Imsen. All around the man-made oasis of orchards and meadows, the sage and the sand, pushed from the river by the jumble of placer pits, emphasized by sharp ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... food production. They are purchasers in the open market. This country must be that market; and it behooves us to look to it that the market be well stocked. There is land enough now and to spare, but will it be so fifty or a hundred years hence? Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... grows in this desert. Passing the scrub they came to lands which were well cultivated and supplied with water from the Jordan by means of wheels and long poles with a jar at one end and a weight at the other, which a man could work, emptying the contents of the jar again and again into an irrigation ditch. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... nestor pulled up at noted wine cafes to water his horse, we contributed to his own irrigation and our champagne thirst. Be ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... It is different in the case of the Boer. Take his stock away from him, and you deprive him of his daily bread. Of course, the facilities for successful cultivation in England are different from those in the Dutch Republics; at the same time, there is such a thing as irrigation, and were this resorted to more generally, and a larger area of land put under cultivation, the Boer farmer would be on a more ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... slowly. He kept dodging rocks which his horses loosed behind him. And in a short time he reached the valley, entering at the apex of the wedge. A stream of clear water tumbled out of the rocks here, and most of it ran into irrigation-ditches. His horses drank thirstily. And he drank with that fullness and gratefulness common to the desert traveler finding sweet water. Then he mounted and rode down the valley wondering what would ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... our intelligent friend, "there are manifest traces, not very far off, of a dense and wealthy population. At all events, the inhabitants appear to have understood some of the arts of life, for they formed a huge tank or pond for the purpose of irrigation; so large, indeed, that there still exists, in one corner of it, a sheet of water extensive enough to deserve the name of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... away, and in Washington. Then, there were the Williams of the Mission House with their only boy and eighty or a hundred Indian children; gentlefolk keeping up the amenities of refined life, spreading the contagion of beautiful example like an irrigation plot widening slowly over arid sage brush. Surely her father was held in esteem by them; and they stood for all that was best in the Valley. Below the ranch houses came what was known as "the English Colony," a scattering of young bachelors playing at ranching, whose rendezvous ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Over the infinite pasture lands at both feet of the Rocky Mountains roamed herds of bullocks destined to feed distant cities in America and in Europe. It was foreseen that many of these lands would in the course of time be ploughed, and by the aid of irrigation turned into corn-fields, wheat-fields, and market-gardens, a process which in New Mexico had already gone far. Even the tract inclosed by the parallels 31 and 45 degrees and the meridians 100 and 120 degrees, which long seemed destined for perpetual ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... that program literally thousands of ponds or small reservoirs have been built in order to supply water for stock and to lift the level of the underground water to protect wells from going dry. Thousands of wells have been drilled or deepened; community lakes have been created and irrigation projects ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... them four days, and we had a fine time. Every man of them was keenly interested in the development of the valley and the discovery of its possibilities. We discussed apples, barley, peaches, apricots, ditches, irrigation, beans, hogs, and a hundred kindred topics, to Johnny's vast disgust. I had been raised on a New England farm; Yank had experienced agricultural vicissitudes in the new country west of the Alleghanies; and the Pines had scratched the surface of the earth in many localities. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... by the tram for the Place de Rome, near 12 in plan. On its way it follows the Corniche road, considered the most beautiful drive about Marseilles, fare fr. The gardens and pleasure-grounds in the whole of this neighbourhood are due to the irrigation afforded by the canal. Of the bathing establishments on the Corniche road the best is the Roucas Blanc; and of the restaurants the best is the Hotel Roubion, afirst-class house, charging 15 frs. per day, and for vin ordinaire, lights, and service, 5frs. additional. The house is situated ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... to the land. Once that is proved, with the great Northwest of America almost untouched, with immense tracts of good land in Africa and other continents, and with the United States about to open up millions of acres of land, made fertile by means of irrigation, we shall be ready to act and get rid of the surplus city population. But first we must have the proof, and the question before us is whether the Salvation Army has sufficiently proved ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... agriculture the Egyptians were the most advanced of the nations of antiquity, since the fertility of their soil made the occupation one of primary importance. Irrigation was universally practised, the Nile furnishing water for innumerable canals. The soil was often turned up with the hoe rather than the plough. The grain was sown broadcast, and was trodden in by goats. Their plough was very ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... or an olive tree, or a wild fig tree, and among the mountains you may notice little patches scratched and cultivated by the fellahin; but, unless on the great plains of Bashan and Esdraelon and Hamath, and on the uplands of Gilead, or where there is water for irrigation, you may ride for hours along the zigzag paths, over mountain and high-land, and before and behind extend the limestone and flinty rocks, white and blinding, and broken into fragments or burnt into powder. It ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the mountain region, where the scenery is incomparably grand and imposing. The surrounding prairies are naturally arid and sterile, producing but little vegetation, and the primitive grass, though of good quality, is thin and scarce. Now, however, under a competent system of irrigation, the whole aspect of the landscape is changed from what it was thirty years ago, and it has all the luxuriance ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was predicted, the benchland would be cut into squares and farmed,—some day when the government brought to reality a long-talked-of irrigation project. But in the meantime, the land lay unfenced and free. One could look far away to the north, and at certain times see the smoke of passing trains through the valley off there. One could look south to the distant river bluffs, and east and west to the mountains. Jean often climbed ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... to opium I never find it necessary to say much. All admit it to be only and wholly bad. Yet the quantity grown in the district is immense. In the early spring the very first movement of cultivation is the irrigation and working of the opium land, and at the season nearly all the best land blazes with bloom of the poppy. It is a sight to see the country people going to the markets with the "milk" in bowls and basins, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... John M'Gregor, who gives an interesting description of them in his Rob Roy on the Jordan, affirmed that as a work of hydraulic engineering, the system and construction of the canals, by which the Abana and Pharpar were used for irrigation, might be considered as one of the most complete and extensive in the world. As the Barada escapes from the mountains through a narrow gorge, its waters spread out fan-like, in canals or "rivers'', the name of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... supply of rain water for the production of profitable yearly crops. These soils are rendered unfertile by the lack of this one all important factor of fertility. They can be made fertile and productive by supplying them with sufficient water through irrigation. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... north along the west coast. In the main a race of hunters, they had nevertheless, at the time of the discovery of the Americas, attained a remarkable degree of civilization in some localities. They had domesticated ruminants, and not only practised agriculture, but had learned the value of irrigation. They manufactured textile fabrics, were masters of the potter's art, and knew how to erect massive buildings of stone. They understood the working of the precious, though not of the useful, metals; and had even attained to a rude kind ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... cause I know not, perhaps meteorologists do, I only state the fact. But more: though not to the same degree, all the large tract west of the Rocky Mountains has a deficient rainfall, and artificial irrigation is more or less resorted to everywhere. I shall have more to say as to how it is done when, later, I describe the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... time he had lost by day, so as not to fail in his ordinary business engagements. When he was professionally called away to any distance from home—as, for instance, when travelling from Bath to Holkham, in Norfolk, to direct the irrigation and drainage of Mr. Coke's land in that county—he rode on horseback, making frequent detours from the road to note the geological features of the country ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... galloped down it for two hundred yards, and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the road. The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and they led their horses through the gap. They crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found themselves in a large pasture. It was getting lighter every moment, and while they were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... place where irrigation is abundant. It especially applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because "it abounds with water and fruit trees." The Ghutah is one of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Bassorah), Shiraz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Lesseps come past my door and go to Mr. Gladstone's room at the House of Commons, which was next to mine, and going in afterwards to Mr. Gladstone I saw the effect that Lesseps had produced. Lesseps had a promise from Arabi to let him make a fresh-water irrigation canal without payment for the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... dead. There is recorded an account of a man of sixty-four who was killed by a solution containing slightly over a dram of phenol. A half ounce has frequently caused death; smaller quantities have been followed by distressing symptoms, such as intoxication (which Olshausen has noticed to follow irrigation of the uterus), delirium, singultus, nausea, rigors, cephalalgia, tinnitus aurium, and anasarca. Hind mentions recovery after the ingestion of nearly six ounces of crude phenol of 14 per cent strength. There was a case ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... enough to kill these birds. Beaver dropped noisily into the water from trees that exhibited their marvellous carpentry, some lying prostrate, some half chiselled through. It seemed, indeed, as though the beaver were preparing great irrigation works all through this country. Since the law went into effect prohibiting their capture until 1915 they have increased and multiplied all over interior Alaska. They are still caught by the natives, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... with great good humour, from his knees among the vines where he was now picking busily again. "To be sure it hasn't gone without a hitch. Last season we had a long spring drought to fight—and fought it, too, with irrigation. This spring the shot-hole fungus attacked us, but we overcame it with spraying. Of course next year a killing frost may come along and finish the crop for the year—we can't fight that. Such a frost is to be reckoned with on an average ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... American rifles, tools, boots and shoes, while vast regions which depend upon irrigation are becoming interested in American well-boring outfits. Persia is demanding increasing quantities of American padlocks, sewing- machines and agricultural implements. German, English and American machinery is equipping great cotton factories in Japan. I saw ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... country's development—Pastoral, Agricultural, and Manufacturing. The latter should be the last considered by Australia, which is a pastoral and agricultural country. We can develop Australia as it should be developed, by constructing irrigation schemes and opening agricultural areas. We could solve your unemployed problem, give your soldiers a good living wage and increase your country's prosperity. All we ask is that the Federal Government follow ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor |
