The Arizona champion., 1884-07-12
WEEKLY CHAMPION.
Irrigation.

or the surface of the earth IS more ol
 less neglected by the celestial sprink ling pot, and it behooves poor weak
 man to irrigate arti6cially wherever
 he can. Now, you can go into Cali
 fornia, Utah, and Colorado, and by
 irrigation raise garden sass that will
 make your eye bulge; through Wyom.
 ing, especially in the Laramie Plains,
 ,he growing season is confined to the
 time between July SI and August I.
 So that things don't have time to ma
 ture. l will except promissory notes,
 paying two per cent per month, how ever.
 The, season. is so abrupt, and when 1t comes, it is gone again, with that spontamety and forthwith immediate movement peculiar to the flea, that before YOU can put ear muffS on your corn, the ears are frozen and the sea- sons work is nothing but frost bitten chaos and wilted wreck.
 Still. with all this knowledge and in the light of full experience we had years ago on the plains, man named Hayward, who had been fev- CT and ague doctor year or two in the south till people told him they preferred the ague to the style of knowledge he had. Then he preach ed the everlasting gospel till the heav- ems almost rolled together like a scroll? Then he drifted west worked on the night shift in Colorado mine, and practiced law in a quiet, shyster kind of way, till the vigilants got all his practice, and threatened to get him. Then he came to Wyoming to grow up with the country, started a paper and printed it on one of these little amateur card presses that sell for three dollars. This paper he pub lished every day, and Tn the old flush times during the building of the Un- ion & Pacific Railway, sold it at twen ty five cents week. He used it as a little pocket 5lackmailcr, and worried l himself into office by knowing things about prominent men and threatening to publish them.
 We'll, he was the champion of irri- gation in Wyoming and he devoted | a stickful a day to Wyoming agricul- tural possibilities. He favored the organization of a stock company for the purpose of constructing a canal thirty miles long to irrigate a dozen townships. He said we had hereto fore raised nothingon our soil tut hemp and hell, and he favored this great scheme. Finally he got to going, and the company was organized, and | a civil engineer from Missouri, named | Crout, took cast iron blow and a bull team, and constructed the Pio- neer canal, as it was called. The ca nal worked we'll enough where the cuts were, but along the fills Mir Crout found, when it was too late, that he had forgotten to put on any side boards, and therefore the water stopped over and went down the gulches, and buffalo wallows, and al- kali flats, that didn't need any irriga- u0n. Altogether, the scheme was a failure. There is some water back mile from the river, where it had run down during the June freshets, when | the snow melts in the mountains, and l there the antelope comes to drink and wriggle his brief tail, but there are no fields of wavering grain, Not a wave. Irrigation on the Laramie Plains is still confined to that class of agriculture where two men soak slices of pine apple in spirits, and greet each other with the Indian toast, "How."-Bill Nye in New York Mercury.