El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-08-11
METHODS OF IRRIGATION
In Egypt, India, And The Far East
They Are Still Found In Use.
Thousand OF Acres Are Virtual
Iy Watered By Hand.

Iy Watered By Hand.
While irrigation has become q grea.
success in many sections of the west,
the question is 80 broad and cOmpre-
hensive, and there ia so much to learn
about 1t in it's different aspects under
various conditioEs, that when men en-
bark In large irrigation enterprises
without q full knowledge of the sub
ject they frequently do not attsin en-
tire success.
Primitive man did not at first COM
mence to irrigate great valleys and
plains. He began with q small patch
or q well from which the water was
lsboriously drawn. Then he learned
later to broaden his operations and to
work in communities until he was
finally able to handle great projects.
There are thousands of cases of In
dividual irrigation in this country, and
some of them are extremely sstisfac-
tory, where men, by employing the
forces of nature through the medium
of windmills. irrigate small farms.
Taken separately, these are insignifi-
cant as compared with the great ir-
r'gation systems, yet they are COM
plete and effective in themselves, and q
comparison of them with the primitive
methods which have been employed for
centuries and are still in use by people
In other lands may not be uninterest-
ing:
The early history of irrigation in
sons, showing as it does the gradual
development of the art from the most
primitive, simple and laborious meth
DDS. Without artificial watering both
of these countries would today be
largely desert. Cultivation in the
tropics or semi-trOpics can rarely be
conducted over any large extent of
country except by artificial watering OF
at least some portion of the crops. The
rainfsn in some sections may be ut
terly insufficient in any season to ma
ture the crops. In parts of the Punjab
in India the rainfall averages from to
inches only. while in the entire basin
of the Nile the rainfall is practically
nothing. Even in parts of the Hima-
lByas, where the rainfall averages SO
and even 100 inches annually, it is so
unevenly distributed that crops in the
dry season must be matured by arti-
fetal irrigation.
Various methods have been employ
ed, in centuries past, to utilize water
for crop growing, and some of the
crudest are still in use. The Persian
water wheel Is now found in various
forms in Egypt and India, consisting of
q series of earthen pots strung on an
endless rope and revolving on q wheel
with horizontal axis. The lower end
of the rope descends into the well or
tank. filling the spots as the wheel re-
wolves, and as they rise and reach the
top of the wheel they tip over and emp
ty themselves into trough, then des-
cending to the water to be filed again.
These wheels are generally actuated
by bullOcks or sometimes by horses and
camels, and in Egypt both a camel and
a donkey are often harnessed together
in the truck. In some places where
there are many small canals with COM
paratively rapid slopes and high velo-
cities, these wheels, or sakias, as they
are called in Egypt, are driven, usually
as undershOt- wheels, by the streams
themselves. In the Punjab it is not an
uncommon thing to see oxen lifting
water by Persian wheels from depths
of so to 60 feet for irrigation of spring
or summer crops. Another apparatus
which is extensively used in India for
the larger lifts is called the mote. Two
bullocks raise leathern bag by means
of rope and pulley. When the bag
reaches the top of the lift the water is
released into trough.
For lifts OF four to ten feet the sha-
douf is extensively employed on the
banks of the Nile This simply con-
sists of the old fashioned pole and
bucket, which can still be seen in many
New England farm yard. The
pole is pivoted on an upright crotch
and weighted at the butt end with q
stone, and the rope and bucket are at
tached to the small end When the
rope is pulled down and the bucket is
filed the pole nearly balances itself, 30
that slight effort will raise the buck
ct. Another crude but ingenious con-
trivance for making short lifts of from
two to three feet is the doom, which is
used along river banks. This consists
of q trough. usually half of small
tree, which works on a fixed pivot, one
end being depressed into the river and