Vol. I. No. 4.
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.
PUBLISHED BY THE
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Price 50 Cents.
CONTENTS.
Irrigation in California, by Wm. Hammond Hall, State Engineer of
California
Round about Asheville, by Bailey Willis
(Illustrated by one Map and Profile.)
A Trip to Panama and Darien, by Richard U. Goode
(Illustrated by one Map and Profile.)
Across Nicaragua with Transit and Machéte, by R. E. Peary, Civil
Engineer, U. S. N.
(Illustrated by one Map and three Views.)
October, 1889.
PRESS OF TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, NEW HAVEN, CONN.
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.
Vol. I. 1889. No. 4.
IRRIGATION IN CALIFORNIA.
BY WM. HAMMOND HALL.
_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society:_
When I was invited to address this society I had no material at hand on
the subject. I have come to the east without any notes or memoranda
whatever, from which to prepare a lecture or address, no statistical
data which would make a paper valuable, no notes of characteristic
facts to render an address interesting, and no time to write anything
to guide me in any way to a proper treatment of the subject. Some of
your members have thought that I have written something worthy of being
read, and hence this invitation to address you. But, even if they are
right, people who can write cannot always talk, so if I fail in this
address, I shall hope, on the basis of their opinion, that you will
find in the reports I have written something worthy of reading. The
subject has been announced as the "Problems of Irrigation in the United
States." I should like very much to speak broadly on that subject, but
I am unable to do so, for the reasons I have given, and shall have to
speak rather of irrigation in California, trusting that something which
is said, may, perchance, be valuable in relation to the subject at
large. Irrigation in the far west, generally, is attracting a vast deal
of attention. This is particularly the case on the Pacific Coast--the
field with which I am specially acquainted. I apprehend that although
many gentlemen present have a far-reaching and definite appreciation of
the subject at large, many others do not appreciate the value and
importance of irrigation. In the arid parts of California (for we do
not admit that California is as a whole arid) it is a vital matter.
There it is a question of life, for the people. Not more than one-sixth
of the tillable area in the State can sustain a really dense
population, without irrigation; two thirds of it will not sustain even
a moderate population, without irrigation; while one third will not
sustain even a sparse population, without such artificial watering.
Think well over these facts. They are very significant. I doubt whether
they are generally appreciated in California itself.
I have no doubt many persons are familiar with the geography of the
State, but, doubtless, some are not. California has a coast line of 800
miles and a width of from 140 to 240 miles. It is traversed almost
throughout its length by a great mountain chain extending along near
the eastern boundary, which is called the Sierra Nevada, and by a
lesser range, more broken and less unified, running parallel to the
coast, called the Coast Range, the southern extension of which, after
joining the Sierra Nevada, is called the Sierra Madre, and at the
further extremity, the San Jacinto and San Diego mountains. Within the
interior of the State, looked down upon by the Sierra Nevada on the
east, and closed in by the Coast Range on the west, is the great
interior basin--the valley of the San Joaquin and Sacramento
rivers--forming a plain 450 miles long, with an average width of from
40 to 60 miles. Outside of the Sierra Madre in the southern part of the
State, and within the Coast Range, is another interior valley, nearly
100 miles in length and from 20 to 30 miles in width, and outside of
the Coast Range, and lying next to the ocean, is a plain whose length
is from 60 to 70 miles, and width 15 to 20 miles. These three
areas--the great interior valley, the southern interior valley, and the
coast plain of the south--are the principal irrigation regions of the
State. Numbers of smaller areas, as those in San Diego county, come in
as irrigation regions of less importance, and the scattering valleys
along the Coast Range farther north, as the Salinas, etc., will come
forward in the future as important irrigable districts of the State.
Still further north, in the interior, there are the great plains of
Lassen and Mono counties, and some scattering valleys in Shasta county,
where irrigation is also practiced or is being introduced, and these
are on a par with the districts of San Diego county, in the matter of
rank as irrigation regions. East of the Sierra Nevada, and at their
base, lies the Owen's river country, an area suitable for irrigation,
where irrigation is necessary and where it is being introduced. Upon
the great Mojave desert and the Colorado desert, there is at present no
irrigation. The water supply is very scanty. This is an irrigation
region of the future, but it is not regarded by Californians as a
practicable one at present.
With this general idea of the State, we will now look at the rainfall
and water supply. The State contains 157,440 square miles of territory,
of which 17,747 drain into the ocean north of the Golden Gate, 21,665
drain into the ocean south of the Golden Gate, 55,942 drain into the
interior basins, and 62,086 drain out at the Golden Gate. Of this
territory which drains out by the Golden Gate, 26,187 square miles
comprise the Sacramento valley, 31,895 square miles the San Joaquin
valley, and 4,004 the country draining directly to the bays, making the
62,086 given above as the whole area.
The necessity for irrigation in California, and the relative necessity
in different parts of the State, are shown by the distribution of
rainfall. The San Joaquin valley has an average of less than 10 inches
of rainfall, the Sacramento has an average of between 10 and 20 inches.
The great deserts of the Mojave and Colorado have an average of less
than 10 inches, and in certain localities only 3 to 6 inches. The
Salinas valley, a small portion of the coast above Los Angeles, and a
portion of the interior valley of the south, have also an average of
less than 10 inches.
So, we may say, that the great irrigation regions of California have
average amounts of rainfall varying from about 6 up to 20, but
generally less than 10 inches. This rain is distributed in four or five
months of each year, with some slight showers in one or two months
other than these; the remainder of the year being absolutely dry, with
no rainfall whatever. Hence, you will see at once, the necessity for
the artificial application of water in California. In the older
countries of Europe, where irrigation has been practiced for centuries,
for instance, in Spain, where water is used more extensively than in
California, the annual mean rainfall ranges between 10 and 25 inches.
In the irrigation regions of France, the mean rainfall ranges from 10
to 40 inches; in the irrigation regions of Italy, the rainfall is
between 20 and 35 inches--for instance, in the valley of the Po, the
classic land of irrigation, the annual precipitation is from 25 to 35
inches. There are none of these European irrigation regions where the
rainfall is less than 10, and generally it is over 20 inches. But you
will see that the most of the Californian irrigation regions have less
than 15 inches, some less than 10, and the greatest rainfall of any
large irrigable region in California is 18 inches, or, exceptionally,
for smaller regions, 25 inches; while in Europe, the maxima are from 25
to 40 inches in countries where irrigation has long been practiced. It
follows, then, that there is no place in Europe where it is so much
needed as over a large part of California. Another reason why the
necessity is felt in our Pacific Coast State, is found in the character
of our soils; and not alone the surface soils, but the base of the
soil--the deep subsoils. We have soils exceptionally deep; soils which
extend below the surface to 50 feet, underlaid by loose sand and open
gravels, so that the rainfall of winter is lost in them. The annual
rain seldom runs from the surface. It follows that these lands are
generally barren of vegetation without the artificial application of
water.
Considering now the sources of water-supply: we have in the southern
part of the State many streams which flow only for a few weeks after
rainfall, and other streams which run two or three months after the
rainy season. But there is not a stream in all California south of the
Sierra Madre (except the Colorado, which has it sources of supply
outside of the State) which flows during the summer with a greater
volume than about 70 to 80 cubic feet per second--a stream 15 feet in
width, 2 feet deep, and flowing at the rate of 2½ to 3 feet per
second--a little stream that, in the eastern part of the continent,
would be thought insignificant. The largest stream for six months in
the year, in all southern California, is the Los Angeles river. The
Santa Aña river, the next largest, flows from two sevenths to one third
as much; the San Gabriel, the next largest, has perhaps two thirds or
three fourths as much as the Santa Aña; and so, a stream which will
deliver as much water as will flow in a box 4 feet wide and 1½ feet
deep, at a moderate speed, during summer months, would be regarded as a
good-sized irrigation feeder in that southern country. In the greater
interior basin or central valley, we find other conditions. Here we
have a different class of streams. The great Sierra Nevada receives
snow upon its summits, which does not melt till May or June and July.
The melting of these snows is the source of supply of the streams; so
that, while in far southern California, with two or three exceptions,
the greater flow of water in the streams is almost gone by June, in
this central region it is the period of the height of irrigation, and
the streams are flowing at their maximum. Kern river presents about
2000 to 3000 cubic feet of water per second; King's river presents in
the maximum flow of the season about twice to three times as much as
Kern river; the Tuolumne river about as much as King's. As we go
farther north, the Sacramento river presents more than three times as
much as the Tuolumne, so that in the northern part of the great valley,
where the rainfall on the valley itself is greatest, and, consequently,
the necessity for irrigation is least, the irrigation supply increases;
and conversely, the greatest area of irrigation in the valley and the
greatest necessity for it, is, in general, where the water supply is
least.
About 100 years ago irrigation was commenced in California. The Roman
Catholic priests, coming from Mexico where irrigation had long been
practiced, introduced it. They established missions among the Indians,
started cultivation, and by the labor of these Indians built the
original irrigation works. The practice of irrigation was extended in
San Diego county, as far as we are able to trace, to several thousand
acres; in San Bernardino county in the southern interior valley, they
thus cultivated and watered, perhaps 2000 acres; and in Los Angeles
county there were possibly 3000 acres irrigated under Mexican rule.
Traces of the old mission works are found in San Diego, San Bernardino
and Los Angeles counties, and as far north as Monterey county.
Then came the gold fever, when canals were dug throughout the
foot-hills of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, for the supply of
water for the mining of gold; and these canals have since, in many
instances, been turned into feeders for irrigation. Several thousand
miles of irrigation ditches have thus been created from old mining
ditches. In 1852, a band of Mormons came from Salt Lake into the San
Bernardino valley; they bought a Mexican grant rancho there, took
possession of some old mission works, constructed others and started
irrigating. That was probably the first irrigation colony, on a large
scale, composed of others than Mexicans, in California. In 1856, some
Missouri settlers went into the valley of Kern river, diverted water
from that stream, and commenced irrigation upon a small scale. In 1858,
the waters of Cache creek, in the Sacramento valley, were taken out for
irrigation. In 1859, the waters of King's river were taken out and
utilized for irrigation. These instances represent in general outline
the commencement of irrigation in the State. Now we have in the
neighborhood of 750,000 or 800,000 acres actually irrigated each year,
and that represents what would ordinarily be called an irrigation area
of 1,200,000 acres; and there are commanded by the works--reasonably
within the reach of existing canals--an area of about 2,500,000 acres.
In the organization of irrigation enterprises there is great diversity.
Commencing with the simplest form, we have a ditch constructed by the
individual irrigator for his own use; we have then successively ditches
constructed by associated irrigators without a definite organization,
for the service of their own land only; ditches constructed by
regularly organized associations of farmers, with elected officers;
works constructed by farmers who have incorporated under the general
laws of the State and issued stock certificates of ownership in the
properties, for the service of the stockholders only; works where
incorporations have been formed for the purpose of attaching water
stock to lands that are to be sold, bringing in the element of
speculation; then works where the organization has been effected with a
view of selling water-rights; and finally, organizations that are
incorporated for the purpose of selling water. There is a great
difference between the principles of these methods of organization, and
the practical outcome is a great difference in the service of water and
in the duty of water furnished by them. In selling water, measurement
of volume is made by modules--the actual amount of water delivered is
measured--or it is sold by the acre served, or in proportional parts of
the total available flow of the season.
The general character of the irrigation works of the State varies very
much with the varying conditions under which it is practiced. In the
San Joaquin valley, King's river, for instance, comes out of the
mountains nearly on a level with the surface of the plain, cutting down
not more than a few feet below its banks; and hence but little labor is
required to divert its waters out upon the lands to be irrigated; but
farther north, the Tuolumne, as another example, comes out of the
mountains in a deep cañon, and the foot-hills extend far down the plain
on each side. It is easily seen, then, that it will require a million
or more dollars to divert from the latter stream the amount of water
diverted from King's river by the expenditure of a few months' work, by
a small force of the farmers themselves. On King's river, individual
and simple coöperative effort is sufficient to bring water enough upon
the plains to irrigate thousands of acres, while in the case of the
Tuolumne river it is absolutely necessary to have associated capital in
large amount--an entirely different principle of organization from that
which was originally applied on King's river and the Kern and other
rivers in the southern part of the great central valley. In discussions
on the subject of irrigation some people have advanced the idea that
the works should be undertaken by the farmers, and that capital should
have nothing to do with them. That may do very well where the physical
conditions will admit of such a course, and where nothing but the
farmers' own service depends upon it; but the great majority of the
streams of California are of such a character that the work of the
farmers can avail nothing. There must be strong associations and large
capital. For this purpose special laws are required. On the Santa Aña,
in San Bernardino county, water has been easily diverted, and such is
the case with every stream in the interior valley of San Bernardino and
Los Angeles counties.
Capital for the first works was not required. The water was procured by
primitive methods and the works were simple. But in San Diego, an
entirely different condition of affairs prevailed. There the waters are
back in the mountains, twenty or twenty-five miles from the coast, and
the irrigable lands are close along the coast, or within ten or twelve
miles of it. To bring the water out of these mountains requires the
construction of ditches following the mountain sides for 20 to 35
miles. But simple ditches do not answer, because of the great quantity
of water lost from them. So the companies have resorted to fluming, and
even to lining the ditches with cement. Thus in San Diego, individual
effort is out of the question. Farther north again, in the great
interior valley, King's river is a stream where coöperative and
individual effort have been efficient, although it requires a greater
amount of capital there than in the southern interior valley. In the
southern interior valley, perhaps, $10,000 would often build a ditch
and divert all the water that the supply would furnish. On King's river
the works have cost from $15,000 to $80,000 each; on Kern river the
works have cost from $15,000 to $250,000 each; and on the Tuolumne they
will cost from $1,000,000 to $1,200,000 apiece. On Merced river, the
cost has been $800,000 for one work. Taking the streams from San
Joaquin river north, that come out of the Sierra Nevada, up to the
northern end of the valley where the Sacramento river enters it, every
important stream comes into the valley within a deep gorge. The beds of
several of the northern streams are so filled up with mining debris
that diversion from them would be comparatively easy, but in their
natural state there is not an important stream north of the San Joaquin
which could be utilized for irrigation by any other means than through
the agency of capital in large amount. On the west side of this great
valley the tillable strip is comparatively narrow. It is on the lee
side of the coast range of mountains. Precipitation is made first on
the seaward face of the Coast Range, and then crosses the valley,
dropping upon the inland face of the outer range very little more than
upon the valley itself, where the precipitation is only about 10
inches. So that we have no streams coming out of the Coast Range into
the southern part of the interior valley specially noteworthy as
irrigation feeders. But as we go northward the Coast Range becomes
wider, and the big mountain basin containing Clear Lake furnishes a
large supply of water to Cache Creek, probably enough for 10,000 acres.
Stony Creek flows between two ridges of the Coast Range, and out on to
the plains, furnishing about the same amount of water; but still there
are no streams from the Coast Range into the valley that are comparable
with those of the Sierra Nevada. In the northeastern corner of the
State, on the great plains of Modoc, we have the Pitt river, a stream
of very considerable volume, but its waters are in comparatively deep
channels, not very well adapted to diversion, and the consequence is,
they have been utilized to a very small extent, only on small
bottom-land farms. The whole stream can be utilized, however, and the
country is thirsting for water.
The practice of irrigation in California is as diverse as it could well
be. California, as you know, covers a very large range in latitude, but
a greater range in the matter of climate and adaptability to the
cultivation of crops. In the southern portion of the State, the orange
and the banana and many other semi-tropical fruits flourish. In some
localities along the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, also, those
fruits flourish, particularly the orange and the lemon. In the valley
of San Joaquin, wheat is grown by irrigation, and in some places
profitably, and in Kern county quite profitably (were it not for high
transportation charges), because the cost of distributing and applying
water has been reduced to a minimum. There the lands have been laid out
with as much care and precision as the architect would lay out the
stones in a building and the mason would place them. Irrigation is
conducted in some Kern river districts with the greatest ease, scarcely
requiring the use of the shovel. The lands are so laid off with the
check levels that by simply opening gates in the proper order, as the
irrigation superintendents know how, the waters flow out and cover the
successive plats or "checks" in their order, without leaving any
standing water, and finally flowing off without material waste. This is
the perfection of irrigation by the broad or submerging system,--a
method wherein the slope of the ground is first ascertained, platted by
contours, and the checks to hold the water, constructed with scrapers,
are then run out on slight grade contours--not perfectly level, but on
very gentle slopes.
There is no portion of the far southern part of the State where the
check method is applied as it is in Kern county. The practice in San
Bernardino is to irrigate entirely by running water in rills between
the rows of plants. Orange trees planted 24 to 30 feet apart are
irrigated by rills in plough furrows, 5 to 8 between rows, down the
slope of the orchard, which slope varies from about 1 foot in a hundred
to 4 or 5 in a hundred. In Los Angeles county they make banks about a
foot high around each individual tree, forming basins 5 or 6 to 10 or
12 feet in diameter according to the size of the tree. Into these the
water is conducted by a ditch, and the basin being filled, the water is
allowed to remain and soak away. The low, nearly flat valley lands,
when irrigated, are generally divided into square "checks," without
respect to the slope of the ground, and the surface is simply flooded
in water standing 6 inches to a foot in depth.
In the northern part of the State, in Placer and Yuba counties, clover
is grown on hills having side slopes of 10 to 15 feet in a hundred, and
irrigated in plough furrows cut around on contours--which furrows are
about 5 to 10 feet apart horizontally--and the water is allowed to soak
into the ground from each such furrow.
These are the five principal methods of applying water: by the check
system; by rills; by the basin method; by the basin method as applied
to low valleys; and by contour ditches on hill sides. The method
selected for any particular locality is determined not alone by the
crop to be cultivated, but also by the slope of the land and the
character of the soil. For instance, on lands where oranges are
cultivated, in the southern part of the State, where rills are most
generally used, water cannot be applied by the flooding system, for the
reason that irrigation would be followed by cracking of the soil, so
that the trees would be killed. It is necessary on such land to
cultivate immediately after irrigation, and the method of application
is governed more by the soil than by the character of the crop.
We find in California very marked and important effects following
irrigation. For instance, taking the great plains of Fresno, in the San
Joaquin valley: when irrigation commenced there twenty years ago, it
was 70 to 80 feet down to soil water--absolutely dry soil for nearly 80
feet--and it was the rule throughout the great plain, 20 miles in width
and 25 miles in length, that soil water was beyond the reach of the
suction pump; now, in places, water stands on the surface, rushes grow,
mosquitos breed, malarial fevers abound, and the people are crying for
drainage; and lands, whose owners paid from five to twenty dollars per
acre for the right to receive water, now need drainage, and irrigation
is considered unnecessary. The amount of water taken from King's river
which was, a few years ago, regarded as not more than sufficient for
one tenth of the land immediately commanded and that seemed to require
it, is now applied to a fourth of the whole area; so that if irrigation
keeps on, the time will come when the whole country will require
draining.
In a district, where water is applied by the broad method, I saw in
1877 enough water, by actual measurement of flow, put on 20 acres of
land to cover it 18 feet deep, in one season, could it all have been
retained upon it. It simply soaked into the ground, or flowed out under
the great plain. Taking cross sections of this country, north and south
and east and west, I found that where the depth to soil water had,
before irrigation, been about 80 feet, it was then 20, 30, 40 or 60 and
more feet down to it. The soil water stood under the plain in the form
of a mountain, the slope running down 40 to 50 feet in a few miles on
the west and north. On the south and southwest the surface of this
water-mountain was much more steep. In the Kern river country, we have
a somewhat similar phenomenon. Irrigation, in the upper portion of the
Kern delta, affects the water in the wells 6 or 8 miles away. As I
remember the effect is felt at the rate of about a mile a day, that is
to say, when water is used in irrigating the upper portion of the
delta, or of Kern island, as it is called, the wells commence to rise a
mile away in twenty-four hours, and five miles away in perhaps five
days.
In the southern portion of the State, in San Bernardino county, at
Riverside, we find no such effect at all. There it was 70 to 90 feet to
soil water before irrigation and it is, as a general rule, 70 to 90
feet still. Water applied on the surface in some places has never even
wet the soil all the way down, and wells dug there, after irrigation
had been practiced for years, have pierced dry ground for 25 or 30 feet
before getting down to where soil waters have wetted it from below. The
consequences of these phenomena are twofold. In the first place, in the
country that fills up with water, the duty of water--the quantity of
land which a given amount of water will irrigate--has increased.
Starting with a duty of not more than 25 acres to a cubic foot of water
per second, we now find that, in some localities, this amount irrigates
from 100 to 160 acres; and that some lands no longer require
irrigating. In the southern portion of the State, however, the cubic
foot of water irrigates no more than at first, and it is scarcely
possible that it will ever irrigate much more. The saving, as
irrigation goes on in the far southern portion of the State, will be
effected chiefly through the better construction of canals and
irrigation works of delivery and distribution. In Tulare valley, the
duty of water will increase as the ground fills up.
In Fresno, a county which was regarded as phenomenally healthy,
malarial fevers now are found, while in San Bernardino, at Riverside,
such a thing is rarely known. Coming to Bakersfield, a region which
before irrigation commenced was famed for its malarial fevers--known as
unhealthful throughout all the State--where soil water was originally
within 15 feet of the surface, irrigation has almost entirely rid it of
the malarial effects. Chills and fever are rare now, where before
irrigation they were prevalent. What is the reason that where chills
and fever prevailed, irrigation has made a healthful country, while
where chills and fevers were not known, irrigation has made it
unhealthful? I account for it in this way: in the Kern river country
before irrigation was extensively introduced, there were many old
abandoned river channels and sloughs, overgrown with swamp vegetation
and overhung by dense masses of rank-growing foliage. Adjacent lands
were in a more or less swampy condition; ground waters stood within 10
or 20 feet of the surface, and there was no hard-pan or impermeable
stratum between such surface and these waters. In other words, general
swampy conditions prevailed, and malarial influences followed by chills
and fevers were the result. Irrigation brought about the clearing out
of many of these old channel ways, and their use as irrigating canals.
The lands were cleared off and cultivated, fresh water was introduced
through these channels from the main river throughout the hot months,
and the swamp-like condition of the country was changed to one of a
well-tilled agricultural neighborhood with streams of fresh water
flowing through it; and the result, as I have said, was one happy in
its effect of making the climate salubrious and healthful.
Considering now the case of the King's river or the Fresno country, the
lands there were a rich alluvial deposit, abounding in vegetable matter
which for long ages perhaps had been, except as wetted by the rains of
winter, dry and desiccated. Soil water was deep below the surface. Then
irrigation came. Owing to the nature of the soil, the whole country
filled up with the water. Its absorptive qualities being great and its
natural drainage defective, the vegetable matter in the soil, subjected
to more or less continued excessive moisture, has decayed. The
fluctuation of the surface of the ground waters at different seasons of
the year--such surface being at times very near to the ground surface,
and at other times 5 or 6 feet lower--has contributed to the decaying
influences which the presence of the waters engendered. The result has
been, when taken with the general overgrowth of the country with
vegetation due to irrigation, a vitiation of the atmosphere by
malarious outpourings from the soil. The advantage of the pure
atmosphere of a wide and dry plain has been lost by the miasmatic
poisonings arising from an over-wet and ill-drained neighborhood, with
the results, as affecting human healthfulness, of which I have already
spoken. The remedy is of course to drain the country. The example is
but a repetition of experiences had in other countries. The energy and
pluck of Californians will soon correct the matter.
George P. Marsh, in his "Man and Nature," laid it down as a rule that
an effect of irrigation was to concentrate land holdings in a few
hands, and he wrote an article, which was published in one of our
Agricultural Department reports, in which he rather deprecates the
introduction of irrigation into the United States, or says that on this
account it should be surrounded by great safeguards. He cited instances
in Europe, as in the valley of the Po, where the tendency of irrigation
had been to wipe out small land holdings, and bring the lands into the
hands of a few of the nobility. He cited but one country where the
reverse had been the rule, which was in the south and east of Spain,
and pointed out the reason, as he conceived it, that in south and
southeastern Spain the ownership of the water went with the land and
was inseparable from it, under ancient Moorish rights. It is a fact,
that where the ownership of water goes with the land, it prevents
centering of land ownership into few hands, after that ownership is
once divided among many persons, in irrigated regions. But Mr. Marsh
overlooked one thing in predicting harm in our country; that is, that
it will be many years before we will get such a surplus of poor as to
bring about the result he feared. In California, the effect of
irrigation has not been to center the land in the hands of a few. On
the contrary, the tendency has been just the other way. When irrigation
was introduced it became possible for small land holders to live. In
Fresno county, there are many people making a living for a family, each
on 20 acres of irrigated land, and the country is divided into 20 and
40-acre tracts and owned in that way. In San Bernardino the same state
of things prevails. Before irrigation, these lands were owned in large
tracts, and it was not an uncommon thing for one owner to have 10,000
to 20,000 acres of land. So that the rule in California, which is the
effect of irrigation, is to divide land holdings into small tracts, and
in this respect, also, irrigation is a blessing to the country. It
enables large owners to cut up their lands and sell out to the many.
Land values have advanced from $1.25 in this great valley to $50, $150
and even $250 per acre, simply by attaching to the land the right to
take or use water, paying in addition an annual rental: in the southern
portion of the State, they have advanced from $5 and $10 to $500 and
even $1000 an acre, where the land has the right to water; and many
calculations have been made and examples cited by intelligent and
prominent people, to show that good orange land or good raisin-grape
land with sufficient water supply is well worth $1000 an acre. Water
rights run up proportionately in value. A little stream flowing an inch
of water--an amount that will flow through an inch square opening under
four inches of pressure--in the southern part of the State, is held at
values ranging from $500 to $5000. Such a little stream has changed
hands at $5000, and not at boom prices either. In the interior prices
are much less, being from about a quarter to a tenth of those in the
far southern part of the State.
Fully one fourth of the United States requires irrigation. When I say
that, I mean that fully one fourth the tillable area of our country
requires irrigation, in order to support such a population as, for
instance, Indiana has. The irrigated regions of Italy support
populations of from 250 to 300 people to the square mile; of south
France, from 150 to 250 people to the square mile; of southeast Spain,
from 200 to 300. When we have 50 to 100 to the square mile in an
agricultural region we think we have a great population.
The great interior valley of California will not support, without
irrigation, an average of more than 15 to 20 people per square mile.
Irrigate it and it will support as many as any other portion of the
country--reasonably it will support 200 to the square mile. I have no
doubt that the population will run up to ten or twelve millions in that
one valley, and there are regions over this country from the
Mississippi to the Pacific, millions of acres, that can be made to
support a teeming population by the artificial application of water.
And why has it not been done before? Simply for the reason that there
is a lack of knowledge of what can be done and a lack of organization
and capital to carry out the enterprises.
The government has recently placed at the disposal of the United States
Geological Survey an appropriation for the investigation of this
subject, to ascertain how irrigation can be secured, the cost of
irrigation works, and point out the means for irrigation, in the arid
regions. It is one of the wisest things Congress ever did; wise in the
time and in the subject. The time will soon come when the question
would have been forced upon the country, and the wisdom of preparing
for that time cannot be too highly commended.
ROUND ABOUT ASHEVILLE.
BY BAILEY WILLIS.
A broad amphitheatre lies in the heart of the North Carolina mountains
which form its encircling walls; its length is forty miles from north
to south and its width ten to twenty miles. At its southern gate the
French Broad river enters; through the northern gate the same river
flows out, augmented by the many streams of its extensive watershed.
[Illustration: GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. NORTH CAROLINA/TENNESSEE. ASHEVILLE
SHEET. Contour interval 100 feet. 1888.]
[Illustration: SECTION FROM THE CUMBERLAND PLATEAU TO THE BLUE RIDGE.
Natural profiles.]
From these water-courses the even arena once arose with gentle slope to
the surrounding heights and that surface, did it now exist, would make
this region a very garden, marked by its genial climate and adequate
rainfall. But that level floor exists no longer; in it the rivers first
sunk their channels, their tributaries followed, the gullies by which
the waters gathered deepened, and the old plain was thus dissected. It
is now only visible from those points of view from which remnants of
its surface fall into a common plane of vision. This is the case
whenever the observer stands upon the level of the old arena; he may
then sweep with a glance the profile of a geographic condition which
has long since passed away.
Asheville is built upon a bit of this plain between the ravines of the
French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, now flowing 380 feet below the
level, and at the foot of the Beau-catcher hills; toward which the
ground rises gently. The position is a commanding one, not only for the
far reaching view, but also as the meeting place of lines of travel
from north, south, east, and west. Thus Asheville became a town of
local importance long before railroads were projected along the lines
of the old turnpikes. The village was the center of western North
Carolina, as well of the county of Buncombe, and was therefore
appropriately the home of the district Federal court. A May session of
the court was in progress nine years ago when I rode up the muddy
street from the Swannanoa valley. Several well-known moonshiners were
on trial, and the town street was crowded with their sympathizers, lean
mountaineers in blue and butternut homespun. Horses were hitched at
every available rack and fence, and horse trading was active. Whiskey
was on trial at other bars than that of the court, and the long rifle,
powder-horn and pouch had not been left in the mountains. To a
"tenderfoot" (who had the day before been mistaken for a rabbit or a
revenue officer!) the attentions of the crowd were not reassuring.
The general opinion was, I felt, akin to that long afterward expressed
by Groundhog Cayce: "It air an awful thing ter kill a man by accident;"
and I staid but a very short time in Asheville.
Riding away toward the sunset, I traversed the old plain without seeing
that it had had a continuous surface. I noted the many gullies, and I
lost in the multitude of details the wide level from which they were
carved. That the broader fact should be obscured by the many lesser
ones is no rare experience, and perhaps there is no class of
observations of which this has been more generally true than of those
involved in landscape study. But when once the Asheville plain has been
recognized, it can never again be ignored. It enters into every view,
both as an element of beauty and as evidence of change in the
conditions which determine topographic forms. Seldom in the mountains
can one get that distance of wooded level, rarely is the foreground so
like a gem proportioned to its setting; all about Asheville one meets
with glimpses of river and valley, sunken in reach beyond reach of
woodland which stretch away to the blue mountains. The even ridges form
natural roadsites, and in driving one comes ever and anon upon a fresh
view down upon the stream far across the plain and up to the heights.
And to the student of Appalachian history, the dissected plain is a
significant contradiction of the time honored phrase, "the everlasting
hills." That plain was a fact, the result of definite conditions of
erosion; it exists no more in consequence of changes. What were the
original conditions? In what manner have they changed? Let us take
account of certain other facts before suggesting an answer. Of the
mountains which wall the Asheville amphitheatre, the Blue Ridge on the
east and the Unaka chain on the west are the two important ranges. The
Blue Ridge forms the divide between the tributaries of the Atlantic and
those of the Gulf of Mexico, and the streams which flow westward from
it all pass through the Unaka chain. It would be reasonable to suppose
that the rivers rose in the higher and flowed through the lower of the
two ranges, but they do not. The Blue Ridge is an irregular,
inconspicuous elevation but little over 4000 feet above the sea; the
Unaka mountains form a massive chain from 5000 to 6500 feet in height.
That streams should thus flow through mountains higher than their
source was once explained by the assumption that they found passage
through rents produced by earth convulsions; but that vague guess
marked the early and insufficient appreciation of the power of streams
as channel cutters, and it has passed discredited into the history of
our knowledge of valley-formation. That rivers carve out the deepest
cañons, as well as the broadest valleys, is now a truism which we must
accept in framing hypotheses to account for the courses of the French
Broad and other similar streams. Moreover, since waters from a lower
Blue Ridge could never of their own impulse have flowed over the higher
Unaka, we are brought to the question, was the Blue Ridge once the
higher, or have streams working on the western slope of the Unaka range
(when it was a main divide), worn it through from west to east,
capturing all that broad watershed between the two mountain ranges?
Either hypothesis is within the possibility of well established river
action, and both suggest the possibility of infinite change in mountain
forms and river systems. Without attempting here to discriminate
between these two hypotheses, for which a broader foundation of facts
is needed, let us look at the channel of the French Broad below
Asheville, in the river's course through the range that is higher than
its source. Descending from the old plain into the river's ravine, we
at once lose all extended views and are closely shut in by wooded
slopes and rocky bluffs. The river falls the more rapidly as we
descend, and its tributaries leap to join it, the railroad scarce
finding room between the rocks and the brawling current. The way is
into a rugged and inhospitable gorge whose walls rise at last on either
hand into mountains that culminate some thirty miles below Asheville.
At Mountain Island the waters dash beautifully over a ledge of
conglomerate and rush out from a long series of rapids into the deep
water above Hot Springs. Beyond the limestone cove in which the springs
occur, the valley, though narrow still, is wider and bottom lands
appear. Thus the water gap of the French Broad through the Unakas is
narrow and rugged, the river itself a tossing torrent; but had we
passed down other streams of similar course, we should have found them
even more turbulent, their channels even more sharply carved in the
hard rocks. On Pigeon river there are many cliffs of polished
quartzite, and on the Nolichucky river a V-shaped gorge some eight
miles long is terraced where the ledges of quartzite are horizontal and
is turreted with fantastic forms where the strata are vertical. Where
the river valleys are of this sharp cut character in high mountains,
the abrupt slopes, cliffs and rocky pinnacles are commonly still more
sharply accented in the heights. The Alpine tourist or the mountaineer
of the Sierras would expect to climb from these cañons to ragged combs
or to scarcely accessible needle-like peaks. But how different from the
heights of the Jungfrau are the "balds" of the Unakas! like the
ice-worn granite domes of New England, the massive balds present a
rounded profile against the sky. Although composed of the hardest rock,
they yet resemble in their contours, the low relief of a limestone
area. Broad, even surfaces, on which rocky outcrops are few and over
which a deep loam prevails, suggest rather that one is wandering over a
plain than on a great mountain; yet you may sweep the entire horizon
and find few higher peaks. The view is often very beautiful, it is
far-reaching, not grand. No crags tower skyward, but many domes rise
nearly to the same heights, and dome-like, their slopes are steepest
toward the base. The valleys and the mountains have exchanged the
characters they usually bear; the former are dark and forbidding, wild
and inaccessible, the latter are broad and sunlit of softened form,
habitable and inhabited. All roads and villages are on the heights,
only passing travelers and those who prey upon them frequent the
depths.
These facts of form are not local, they are general: all the streams of
the Unaka mountains share the features of the French Broad Cañon, while
peaks like Great Roan, Big Bald, Mt. Guyot, are but examples of a
massive mountain form common throughout the range.
Thus the Unaka chain presents two peculiar facts for our consideration;
it is cut through by streams rising in a lower range, and its profiles
of erosion are convex upward not downward.
If we follow our river's course beyond the Unaka chain into the valley
of East Tennessee we shall still find the channel deeply cut; here and
there bottomlands appear, now on one side, now on the other, but the
banks are more often steep slopes or vertical cliffs from fifty to one
hundred feet high. The creeks and brooks meander with moderate fall
through the undulating surface of the valley, but they all plunge by a
more or less abrupt cascade into the main rivers. It is thus evident
that the tributaries cannot keep pace with the rivers in
channel-cutting, and the latter will continue to sink below the surface
of general degradation until their diminished fall reduces their rate
of corrasion below that of the confluent streams.
If from topographic forms we turn to consider the materials, the rocks,
of which they are composed, we shall find a general rule of relation
between relative elevation and rock-hardness. Thus the great valley of
East Tennessee has a general surface 3000 feet below the mean height of
the Unakas: it is an area of easily soluble, often soft, calcareous
rocks, while the mountains, consist of the most insoluble, the hardest,
silicious rocks. East of the Unakas the surface is again lower,
including the irregular divide, the Blue Ridge; here also, the
feldspathic gneisses and mica schists are, relatively speaking, easily
soluble, and non-coherent. What is thus broadly true is true in detail,
also where a more silicious limestone or a sandstone bed occurs in the
valley it forms a greater or less elevation above the surface of the
soft rocks; where a more soluble, less coherent stratum crops out in
the mountain mass, a hollow, a cove, corresponds to it. Of valley
ridges, Clinch mountain is the most conspicuous example; of mountain
hollows the French Broad valley at Hot Springs, or Tuckaleechee Cove
beneath the Great Smoky mountain, is a fair illustration.
But impassive rock-hardness, mere ability to resist, is not adequate to
raise mountains, nor is rock-softness an active agent in the formation
of valleys. The passive attitude of the rocks implies a force, that is
resisted, and the very terms in which that attitude is expressed
suggest the agent which applies the force. Hardness, coherence,
insolubility,--these are terms suggestive of resistance to a force
applied to wear away, to dissolve, as flowing water wears by virtue of
the sediment it carries and as percolating waters take the soluble
constituent of rocks into solution. And it is by the slow mechanical
and chemical action of water that not only cañons are carved but even
mountain ranges reduced to gentle slopes.
If we designate this process by the word "degradation," it follows from
the relation of resistance to elevation in the region under discussion
that we may say: The Appalachians are mountains of differential
degradation; that is, heights remain where the rocks have been least
energetically acted on, valleys are carved where the action of water
has been most effective.
In order that the process of degradation may go on it is essential that
a land mass be somewhat raised above the sea, and, since the process is
a never-ceasing one while streams have sufficient fall to carry
sediment, it follows that, given time enough, every land surface must
be degraded to a sloping plain, to what has been called a base level.
With these ideas of mountain genesis and waste, let us consider some
phases of degradation in relation to topographic forms; and in doing so
I cannot do better than to use the terms employed by Prof. Wm. M.
Davis.