Arizona republican., 1896-12-29
NOVELTY IN IRRIGATION.
Railroads Can Stop It by an
 Injunction Suit.
This Is in British Columbia, How . ever, Where Very Peculiar Con- ditions Exist in a Hitherto Unre- ported Arid Belt.

lumbia there is an annual rainfall varying from siXty-two inches at Van couver to over 150 inches in the noun tains to the eastward. Irrigation there would seem to savor highly of the ridiculous, and yet only 100 miles inland is an arid belt as dry as Ari- Zopa, with a rainfall of six to twelve inches and a summer temperature Of 115 to 120 degrees. This region eX- tends from the coast range to the Sel- kirk mountains and is 200 miles east and west by several hundred miles north and south, irrigation being prac- ticed at the Caribou mining district, 400 miles beyond the United States boundary line.
 As the winters are very cold, with a temperature of forty and fifty de- grees below zero, it is necessary to raise summer grain and hay to sup port stock, which constitutes princi- pal industry in that dry valley. This is done by irrigation, the water being diverted from steep mountain streams by rude and inexpensive ditcheS. Un- limited water can be had and that has given rise to a peculiar phenomenon, so that the courts have been called on to decide whether the farmer or the Canadian Pacific railway crossing his lands should be suppressed. A contest somewhat like that prevailing a few years ago between the hydraulic min CTS and the farmers of northern Cali fornia arose, with the result that in this instance the farmer had to sub side.
 The whole matter was laid before the fifth national irrigation congress that met in Phoenix last week, by James D. Schuyler, an hydraulic en- gineer of Los Angeles. His paper, entitled, Irrigation in British Colum- bia and Some of It's Results,' proved very interesting. The feature that will most interest readers of countries like ours is the effect of irrigation upon the roadbed of the Canadian Pa ciflc line. In a few years the track began to sink and to slide off toward the river. At one place the sinkage was as much as four feet in one night and the movement toward the river nearly eight feet. Repairs became so costly and apparently useless that the railroad company finally sent for En- gineer Schuyler and Colonel Robert B. Stanton, whose perilous railroad ex- ploration through the Grand canyon and other rapids of the Colorado river five years ago will be remembered, to examine and report upon the cause and remedy for so damaging phe- nomenon.
 These engineers last month made such investigations as enabled them to establish the following theory: That Thompson River valley in this arid section of British Columbia was an ciently an arm of the sea or lake upon whose bottom had. settled deposits of fine mud or silt hundreds of feet thick Afterwards as the continent rose this sea or lake stood several hundred feet above the ocean. its waters flowed off and the river that remained cut a channel through the deposit of silt As the river subsided it cut channel of different widths so that finally the val ley was left in terraces, each rising 100 or 200 feet above the other. Over the silt gravel spread and combined with some of the mud to form a ce- ment sufficiently hard to support each terrace so long as the latter remained dry. Above the cement, called 'boul- der clay" and 200 or 300 feet thick, oc- cured coarse gravel or sand with a sandy loam from one to four feet thick, forming the surface soil.
 Such formation readily absorbed water, which found it's way down to the lower strata of fine silt or mud hot ho1 :&. rise above the ocean level. The silt took up 5 per cent of it's bulk in water before changing form, but with IS per cent it became a thin, unstable mass like pea soup, seeking an outlet into the river and finally working path way thither AS it poured out into the Thompson the upper terraces that had formerly rested upon the now escaped foundation of silt sank suddenly tC fill the vacancy, at the same time that the lands nearer the river f1oated to- wards it, sometimes for a distance o1 5000 feet.
 From Engineers Schuyler and Stau. tons researches the jury became sat. isfied that the damage to the railroad was caused by the irrigation of ad jacent land. An injunction was issued restraining the farmers upon the wei known legal maxim that, lone mus so use his own property as not to in jure another's" The consequence i: that in that particular arid section O. British Columbia agriculture must bt discontinued so long as the Canadian Pacific railroad passes through it The case will be appealed to the Eng fish privy council and irrigation people generally will wait with considerabl, anxiety to know whether the law o Great Britain can prohibit so funda mental and necessary an industry a farming in order that railroad ma.