The oasis., 1894-04-12
COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE
 ARID WEST.
From tllc IrrlgatIon Arc.

vantage 70 FOLLOW the irrigation or cul-
 tivable land in the arid belt is the fa-
 cility thus afforded for colonial settle
 ments. Isolation has ever been. and
 now Is, everywhere the bane of agricul-
 tural life in the United States. Less
 progressive people in some other coun-
 tries, have, from time immemorial,
 set us a better example The farm
 village is common in many countries
 and is not unknwn even in Mexico and
 the Central and South American
 States. Unhappily, 1t is rather the
 workers upon surrounding lands and
 not the land owners who form the vil-
 lages. The custom Of living in villages
 and going forth to the labor of the
 field at sunrise may have had it's origin
 in the necessity for banding together
 as protection against wild beasts or savage men. In anyeyent, the custom
 prevails largely in nothercountries than
 our own, and has manifold advantages
 which need not be here specified.
 The ideal and possible American
 farm village, however. is not one
 wherein are grouped in wretched how els the ill-fed tenants of land baron who maintains himself in princely state elsewhere; but one made up of elegant homes and little farms. each one tended by the happy, educated and independent owner and family. Such centcrs of education, refinement and good citizenship are nowhere sD easy Of realization as in the irrigable arid region. Indeed they are practic- ally impossible in non-irrigable sec tions. and any near approach to these desirable conditions in most of the older states can never be obtained.
 It is only where the control of a suf- ficient water supply makes possible the maximum products of land that subdivision into small holdings can be carried to the point of a self-support- ing farm village or small colonial set tlemcnt. Tn the vast irrigablc sec tions now lying bleak and dreary on the endless plains of Texas. or among the snow-clad peaks of Montana, are thousands of the most eligible sites for colonies which a proper develop ment of irrigation systems. either general or local, would make immedi- ately available. To the casual obscry- CT these dismal wastes arc Il terror, and the Ohio man, or the man from Illinois, who sees them for the first time, experiences q sensation akin to that 0f tho traveller who leaves the green holdcr edging he Nile and be- takes himself toward he limitless drearincss ef sahara. To him these regions appear to be forever destined to be wholly given over to desolation. and entirely beyond the power of man to make it for human habtation. Noi greater error could be made. These most uninyiting stretches of monot- onous, plain and struggling herbage are the broad stages upon which are certain to be wrought, in the not dis tant future. some of the most remark ! able transformation scenes witnessed 1 by man in any country. These gloomy ! realms, now the inhospitable home of the coyote and the prairie dog, are { destined to ipcumc the eenterS Of the f highest type uf rural life upon the | iei lhis soil now aS black as interstcllar Face, but feel the re- [ touch uf water from the [ mountain stream and the miracle is f ..iirbl,r,l,lnt