The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1898-11-24


vada on Cne side, or slip off into the
! Pacific waters on the other-Chlifor-
MIA, the thin slice of land, as l sup
posed it in my boyhood, l have found
to be larger than all the states of New
England and all New York state and
all Pennsylvania added together; and
if you add them together their square
miles fall short of California. And
then all these newborn states of the
Union, North and South Dakota,
Washington, Montana, Idaho and Wy
| oming. Each state an empire in size.
But" says some one, ''in caIculat-
ing the immensely of our continental
acreage you must remember that vast
reaches Of our public domain are un-
cultivated heaps of dry sand, and the
Bad Lands of Montana and the Great
American Desert" l am glad that you
mentioned that. Within twenty-five
years there will not be between the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts a hundred
miles of land not reclaimed either by
farmers plow or miners crowbar. By
! irrigation, the waters of the rivers and
the showers of Heaven, in what are
called the rainy season, will be gath
| cred into great reservoirs, and through
aqueducts let down where and when
the people want them. Utah is an OBJ
jcct lesson. Some parts of that ter
ritory which were so barren that a
spear of grass could not have been
raised there in hundred years, are
| now rich as Lancaster county farms of
New Jersey. Experiments have proved
that ten acres of ground irrigated
from waters gathered in great hyro-
logical basins will produce as much as
| seen in our region. We have our
| freshets and our drougths. AS you
| take a pitcher and get it full of water,
and then set it on a table and take 4
drink out of it when you are thirsty
and never think of drinking a pitcher
| full all at once, so Montana and WyD-
| ming and Idaho will catch the rains of
their rainy season and take up all the
waters of their rivers in great pitchers
| of reservoirs, and refresh their land
| whenever they will.
The work has already been grandly
| begun by the United States govern
| ment. Over 400 lakes have already
| been officially taken possession of by
| the nation for the great enterprise of
| irrigation. Rivers that have been roll
| ing idly through these regions, doing
| nothing on their way to the sea, will
be lassoed and corralled and penned
| up until such time as the farmers need
| them. Under the same processes the
Ohio. the Mississippi, and all the 9TH
| themselves better, and great basins
will be made to catch the surplus of
waters in times of freshet, and keep
| them for times of drought. The irri-
| eating process by which all the arid
! lands between the Atlantic and Paci-
tic oceans are to be fertilized is no
| new experiment.
| 1t has been going on successfully
hundreds of years in Spain, China, in
India, in Russia, in Egypt. About
500, 100000 of people of the earth to-
day are kept alive on food raised on ir-
rigated land. And here we have al
lowed to lie waste, given up to rattle
snake and bat and prairie dog, lands
enough to support whole nations of
| industrious population. The work be-
| gun will be consummated. Here and
there exceptional lands may be stub
born and refuse to yield any wheat or
corn from their hard fists, but if the
| f,,,1 10 l4
miners pick-aX will discover the rea-
son for it, and bring mp from beneath
| those unproductive surfaces coal and
iron and lead and copper and gold
God speed the geologisas and survey
ors, the engineers and the senatorial
commissions, and the capitalists and
the new settlers and the husbandmen,
who put their brain and hand and
heart to this transformation of the
American continent! Streams in the
desert"
But while 1 speak of the immensity
of the continent, l must remark it is
not an immensity of monotone or
tameness. The larger some countries
are, the worse for the world. This
continent is not more remarkable for
it's magnitude than for it's wonders OF
construction. Yosemite and the ad-
| joining California regions! Who that
has seen them can think Of them with
out having his blood tingle? Trees
now standing there were old when
Christ lived! These monarchs OF
foliage reigned before Alexander, and
the next 1000 years will not shatter
their scepter! They are the masts OF
the continent, their canvas spread or
the winds, while the old ship bears on
its way through the ages!
That valley of the Yosemite is eight
miles long and a half mile wide, anC
5000 feet deep. 1t seems as if it hat
been the meaning of Omnipotence tt
crowd into as small place as possible
some of the most stupendous scenery
of the world. Some of the cliffs yo,
do not stop to measure by feet, fol
they are literally mile high. Steep st
that neither foot of man or beast eve1
scaled them, they stand in everlasting