"Irrigation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with cheerfulness and steadiness beyond all praise, and not even the prisoners, of whom 1,600 had been captured at Ctesiphon, were allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy. The country around is perfectly flat, covered with short grass or shrub, though here and there old irrigation channels make it difficult for carts or motor cars to negotiate. The operations above the Kut were carried out by land, though ships bore an important part in bringing up supplies and the thousand and one things required by an army in the field. An enemy report was published to the effect that the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the result of vast labour in past ages. Valleys were closed in by immense dams of solid masonry, which, checking the course of the rivers, formed lakes of many miles in extent. These were used as reservoirs for the water required for the irrigation of rice lands. The population who effected these extensive works have long since passed away; their fate is involved in mystery. The records of their ancient cities still exist, but we have no account of their ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... strange freaks of nature. Here are the numerous hot springs and Pyramid Lake, an enormous body of water forty miles out in the desert, which possesses no apparent outlet although the Truckee flows into it. And apart from that, the development of agriculture and irrigation is interesting. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... of the Tigris valley and the desert into which it merges. There are no hills, trees, or any distinguishing features, but the strip nearest the river, varying from one to several miles in breadth, is cultivated and intersected with irrigation channels, some six feet, some six inches, in width and depth. These are invaluable as cover to troops on the defensive, and almost impassable to transport carts. It was here the enemy had expected us, and was holding ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... voice. The development of steam and gasoline engines, of the electric current, and of a welter of machinery called for engineers. The specialization of engineering practice into production, chemical, industrial, municipal, efficiency, mining, construction, concrete, drainage, irrigation, landscape, and other phases, has still further increased the demand. Some few engineers, by means of keen financial ability in addition to extraordinary powers in the engineering field, have made themselves names of international fame, as well ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... survivors are those which or who have conformed to their environment and that they have survived because of their conformity. And what do we mean by environment? And does not man modify his environment? Certainly he changes by irrigation a desert into a garden. He carries water against its tendency to the hill-top. But he has learned to do this only by studying the laws which govern the motions of fluids and rigorously obeying them. He must carry his water in strong pipes and take it from some higher point, or must use heat or some ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... avowedly because they provided food, as was the case with the Moxos, who called themselves children of the lake or river on which their village was, and were afraid to migrate lest their parent should be vexed;[124-1] sometimes because they were the means of irrigation, as in Peru, or on more general mythical grounds. A grove by a fountain is in all nature worship the ready-made shrine of the sylphs who live in its limpid waves and chatter mysteriously in its shallows. On such a ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... round their huts, which they cultivate in the same way as they would plots of flowers, but without any other labor than supporting the plant with a proportioned stake, clearing the ground from weeds, and attending to daily irrigation. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Mountains. The Great Basin, whereof Salt Lake is the lowest point, and the Valley of the Colorado, which skirts it on the east, are mainly sterile from drouth or other causes—not one acre in each hundred of their surface being arable without irrigation, and not one in ten capable of being made productive by irrigation. Arid, naked, or thinly shrub-covered mountains traverse and chequer those deep yet elevated valleys, wherein few savages or even wild animals of any size or value were ever able to find subsistence. Probably that of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Put it under irrigation and turn it into orchards and farms, as they have done so many places here on the Western Slope. You know, Colorado apples and peaches are fast becoming ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... store was patronized by the cow-boy, so much abused with sensational or picturesque intentions, and by the small farmers with irrigation patches in the vicinity. It was likewise the resort of Encarnacion and Tomas, and others their brethren, from the Mexican village a few miles up the creek, or from isolated abiding-places round about. Here they would come, and, rolling cigarettes of the brown paper ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers to use and wont; for mere kindly attachment to the system of tillage transmitted with the patrimonial soil was far from influencing the practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows, may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently developed—Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion of the theory of agriculture. Welcome rest followed diligent and judicious labour; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... imposing. The surrounding prairies are naturally arid and sterile, producing but little vegetation, and the primitive grass, though of good quality, is thin and scarce. Now, however, under a competent system of irrigation, the whole aspect of the landscape is changed from what it was thirty years ago, and it has all the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... life-process guides education in its vital purpose. The system of folk-education, which is indigenous to India, but is dying out, was one with the people's life. It flowed naturally through the social channels and made its way everywhere. It is a system of widespread irrigation of culture. Its teachers, specially trained men, are in constant requisition, and find crowded meetings in our villages, where they repeat the best thoughts and express the ideals of the land in the most effective form. The mode of instruction includes the recitation of epics, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... to the red men the fair Valley Dor it would have accomplished much, and in the Land of Lost Souls between the Mountains of Otz and the ice barrier were many broad acres that needed no irrigation to ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is the great cotton-growing tract of the Province, and at present the most wealthy. The valleys of the Wainganga and Mahanadi further east receive a heavier rainfall and are mainly cropped with rice. Many small irrigation tanks for rice have been built by the people themselves, and large tank and canal works are now being undertaken by Government to protect the tract from the uncertainty of the rainfall. South of the plain lies another expanse of hill and plateau comprised in the zarmindari ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... business and one to another; the strongest to dig and cut wood, and to build huts for the rest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out of skins; the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though their labours were thus naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked men would understand well enough that the speediest progress was to be made by helping each other,—not by opposing each other: and they would know that this help could ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... water; serum, serosity^; lymph; rheum; diluent; agua [Sp.], aqua, pani^. dilution, maceration, lotion; washing &c v.; immersion^, humectation^, infiltration, spargefaction^, affusion^, irrigation, douche, balneation^, bath. deluge &c (water in motion) 348; high water, flood tide. V. be watery &c adj.; reek. add water, water, wet; moisten &c 339; dilute, dip, immerse; merge; immerge, submerge; plunge, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... literally thousands of ponds or small reservoirs have been built in order to supply water for stock and to lift the level of the underground water to protect wells from going dry. Thousands of wells have been drilled or deepened; community lakes have been created and irrigation projects are being pushed. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... hand, and one of them is a creation for immortality. Mrs. Poyser is a woman with an incorrigible tongue, set firmly in opposition to the mandates of a heart the overflows of whose sympathy and love keep the circle of her influence in a state of continual irrigation. Her epigrams are aromatic, and she is strong in simile, but never ventures beyond her own depth into that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... brain. On the other hand, the brain is known to be imperfectly supplied with blood during sleep, and cannot therefore be at full work. It is probable enough, from hydraulic analogies, that imperfect irrigation would lead to partial irrigation, and therefore to suppression of action in some parts of the brain, and that this is really the case seems to be proved by the absence ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... years mighty works had been done: forts, irrigation of deserts, reclamation of the Dead Sea, passionate temples clapped to the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the country would draw multitudes ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... village, immediately behind the backs of the houses, rose the abrupt red hills, divided into fields by broad oak hedges, thickly set with elms. The water of the stream, intercepted at some point higher up, was carried round the crown of the hills for the purposes of irrigation, which, even at this dead season, showed its advantages by the brilliant emerald green of the tender young grass on the hill-sides. Drumston, in short, was an excellent specimen of a close, dull, dirty, and, I fear, not very ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... take their part in the forefront of the fighting line, followed them, after that some more of the Yorkshire Light Infantry. Little by little a force was collected which cleared several of the nearest houses on the right and effected an occupation of an irrigation patch from which they were never dislodged." It was quite wonderful to note the effect of the gallant British cheer which rang out from General Pole-Carew's men as they burst from the river, bayonet in hand. The ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... old a warlike and industrious race. They were diggers and builders; the isles are still full of their deserted monuments; the modern word for law, Kanawai, "water rights," still serves to remind us of their ancient irrigation. And the island story is compact of battles. Their courage and goodwill to labour seems now confined to the sea, where they are active sailors and fearless boatmen, pursue the shark in his own element, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hence no system of agriculture has been yet adjusted to the peculiarities of climate and soil. Instead of studying and adopting the agriculture of similar climates, and the arts by which deficiencies in similar latitudes have from time immemorial been corrected: irrigation, for instance, has not been yet attempted; the natural fertility of the soil has alone been relied on, to compensate, in favourable, seasons, for the deficiencies of others, not favourable, perhaps, for the growth of wheat or barley, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... secured. Without money one can do nothing. Cecil Rhodes had had the natural wealth of Rhodesia at his back. McKeith had set himself the task of opening up the fine country out West, which he knew only needed a system of irrigation by Artesian Bores to defy drought, the squatters curse. That object once accomplished—he gave himself with luck and good seasons five or six years—there would be nothing to stop his becoming a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... is to Egypt, the stream which flows here is to Biskra. By considerable labor it has been made to meander among the palms in numerous tiny canals, thus by an elaborate system of irrigation causing the barren soil of the desert to become fertile and bring forth fruit. Everywhere the little runlets are led round the very roots of the trees, for the palm, it is said, loves to have its head in the fire and its feet in the water. Here and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Julia Fanning was teaching? Well, he was an architect at Garden City, and lives in Chicago now. We sort of chum together: saw him yesterday. He left Garden City when the land company went up. I tell you, that was a hot town for a while! Railroads, and factories, and irrigation schemes, and prices scooting toward the zenith, till you couldn't rest. If I'd got into that push soon enough, I shouldn't have made a thing but money; as it was, I didn't lose only what I had. A good many of the boys lost a ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... valuable, both in quality and nutritive value, than the first crop. In all lands designed for permanent pasture, therefore, it should form a considerable part of a mixture. It will endure almost any amount of forcing, by liquid manures or irrigation. It requires three or four years, after soiling, to gain a firm footing in the soil. The seed is covered with the soft and woolly husks of the flower, and is consequently light; weighing but five pounds to the bushel, and containing seventy-six ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... settlers who will eventually take up these lands. The United States should not, in my opinion, undertake the construction of dams or canals, but should limit its work to such surveys and observations as will determine the water supply, both surface and subterranean, the areas capable of irrigation, and the location and storage capacity of reservoirs. This done, the use of the water and of the reservoir sites might be granted to the respective States or Territories or to individuals or associations upon the condition that the necessary works ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... initiated by the British Administrators had as yet only caused unpopularity. Baring's interference galled the Khedive and his Ministers. Vincent's parsimony excited contempt. Moncrieff's energy had convulsed the Irrigation Department. Wood's army was the laughing-stock of Europe. Among and beneath the rotten weeds and garbage of old systems and abuses the new seed was being sown. But England saw no signs of the crop; saw only the stubborn husbandmen ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... to make no noise, and there in the next room was that red imp yelling the roof off, yet neither of his female relatives seemed to mind in the least, though his remarks interfered very seriously with the article on "Irrigation Systems of Southern Europe," which I was working ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... changed the drainage of a country. Travelling from Casma to Huaraz (not very far distant from Lima) he found a plain covered with ruins and marks of ancient cultivation, but now quite barren. Near it was the dry course of a considerable river, whence the water for irrigation had formerly been conducted. There was nothing in the appearance of the water-course to indicate that the river had not flowed there a few years previously; in some parts beds of sand and gravel were spread out; in others, the solid rock had been worn into a broad channel, which in one spot was ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... mountains, a lofty chain, separating the elevated plateau of Central Persia from the moist and wooded slopes of the Caspian Sea; south of this great dividing ridge the country is an arid and barren waste, a desert, in fact, save where irrigation redeems here and there a circumscribed area, and the mountain slopes are gray and rocky. Crossing over to the northern side of the divide, one immediately finds himself in a moist climate, and a country green almost as the British Isles, with dense boxwood forests covering the slopes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Dewan—Sir K. Sheshadri Iyer, K.C.I.E.—has taken measures which must ultimately place the Province in a safe position, or at least in as safe a position as it can be placed. He has seen, and it has been amply proved by our experience in the Madras Presidency during the famine of 1876-77, that the only irrigation work that can withstand a serious drought is a deep well, and he has brought out a most admirable measure for encouraging the making of them by the ryots. The principal features of this are that money, to be repaid gradually over a long series of years, is to be advanced by the State on the most ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... been somewhat affected by the surrounding water, for the spherical glands were not quite uniform in appearance; and a few of the oblong ones were brown, with their utricles shrunk. Of the oblong glands, those which were before colourless, became brown in 3 hrs. 12 m. after irrigation, with their utricles slightly shrunk. The spherical glands did not become brown, but their contents seemed changed in appearance, and after 23 hrs. still more changed and granular. Most of the oblong glands were now dark brown, but ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... on the character of the soil. If it is so high and dry as to suffer severely from drought two years out of three, it cannot be made to pay except by irrigation; if so low as to be wet, rather than moist, the prospects are but little better. Those who are permanently settled must do their best with such land as they have, and in a later chapter I shall suggest how differing soils should be managed. To those who ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... greatly. I had seen among the Igorrotes or head-hunters of the island of Luzon, in the Philippine Archipelago, that same method of irrigation, by collecting the water from a high point on the mountain side in order to irrigate consecutively the series of terraces. Not only was I struck by the fact of finding so unusual a method of cultivation ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... then in Arizona. Ponds and lakes were unheard of. They did not seem to exist in that drear land of arid wastes. We never heard of water except that of the Colorado or the Gila or the tanks and basins, and irrigation ditches of the settlers. But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies above us. We feasted our eyes and our very ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... told was a characteristic feature of those magnificent prairies to the north. The wiry grass is very short there, something like the Milk River grass in Southern Alberta, and hay is scarce. This drawback will doubtless be got over hereafter by dry farming, or better still by irrigation, should the lakes to the north ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... thinking about: Trusts, the gold standard, the free coinage of silver, a canal across Nicaragua or the isthmus of Panama, election of United States senators by the people, repeal of the war taxes, statehood for the territories, independence for the Filipinos, aid to American shipping, irrigation of the arid lands in the West, public ownership of railways and telegraphs, desecration of the Sabbath, equality of men and women, exclusion of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... of rugged mountains, through which the Yangtze has cut its deep and narrow channel. The area is everywhere intersected by steep-sided valleys and ravines. The world-famed plain of Chen-tu, the capital, is the only plain of any size in the province, the system of irrigation employed on it being one of the wonders of the world. Every food crop flourishes in Szech'wan, an inexhaustible supply of products of the Chinese pharmacopoeia enrich the stores and destroy the stomachs of the well-to-do; ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... opium I never find it necessary to say much. All admit it to be only and wholly bad. Yet the quantity grown in the district is immense. In the early spring the very first movement of cultivation is the irrigation and working of the opium land, and at the season nearly all the best land blazes with bloom of the poppy. It is a sight to see the country people going to the markets with the "milk" in bowls and basins, and the buyers and sellers of it riding along, each with a weighing-balance stuck in his belt. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and otherwise prepared for the settlement of the owners. After some deliberation, fifty men set their names to an agreement to buy eleven hundred and sixty-five acres of land, at two dollars per acre; securing water-rights for irrigation with the purchase, because in that region the dry summers ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... soil composed of volcanic ash and the disintegration of basaltic rocks which, together with some humus from decayed vegetation, has made a field of surpassing fertility for the production of the cereals with scant water supply; but under the magic touch of irrigation it doubles its output and makes of it not only a grain field but an orchard and garden as well. Underneath the forests of eastern Washington, along the northern border of the state and in its southeastern corner there is added a large proportion of clay, a necessary ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... are valuable to the farmers as drainage lines, as irrigation supply, as carriers and equalizers of transportation rates, as a readily available power resource, and for raising food fish. The wise development of these and other uses is important to both agricultural and other interests; their protection from monopoly is one of the first responsibilities ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... area in the world especially suitable for growing cotton, the most extensively-used clothing material. Flowers grow luxuriantly and beautifully whenever cultivated and watered. A few years ago when writing on the "White Australia" question, I stated that with high culture, water irrigation, and scientific irrigation, Australia was capable of supporting 400 millions of inhabitants. A high literary authority, in reviewing the book, remarked that this seemed like a "gross exaggeration"; but probably he had not thought so much on the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... up the subject of irrigation, there; they say that's what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians perfect their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the husbandman. Indian corn is produced in abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords subsistence for a numerous and dense population. Rice arrives at maturity to a great extent in the marshy districts; and an incomparable system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of the Alps to every field, and in some places to every ridge, in the grass lands. It is in these rich meadows, stretching round Lodi, and from thence to Verona, that the celebrated Parmesan ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Satsuma—all these began to flourish. Another feature of the time was the cultivation of the sweet potato at the suggestion of Aoki Konyo, who saw in this vegetable a unique provision against famine. Irrigation and drainage works also received official attention, as did the reclamation of rice-growing areas ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... if I started acting like a master around this ranch in the morning, they'd find my body in an irrigation ditch ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... itself has a population of about one thousand souls, and was first settled in 1850, by colonists from Chihuahua. All land in this portion of the territory is cultivated by irrigation; and, as this was the first time Hal had ever seen it practiced to any extent, he asked permission to remain behind in town a little while, to witness the operation. Ned also expressed a desire to see it, and, after consulting Jerry, ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... shrilling their questions, exclamations and comments, completely driving from my mind the details of the actual application of the Metamorphizer. Anyway, Miss Francis had been concerned with putting it in the irrigation water—which didnt apply in this case. I thought a moment. A gallon was enough for thirty acres; half a pint should suffice for this—more than suffice. Irrigation water, nonsense—I'd squirt it on and tell the woman to hose it down afterward—that'd ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... elevation about midway between the Ganges and Jumna. Principal rivers are the Ganges and Jumna—the former navigable all the year round, the latter only during the rains. The Ganges canal intersects the district, and serves both for irrigation and navigation. The Lower Ganges canal has its headworks at Narora. The climate of the district is liable to extremes, being very cold in the winter and excessively hot in the summer. In 1901 the population was 1,138,101, showing an increase of 20% in the decade. The district is very ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... range, as a sock, squeezed from the ankle downward, yielded up its irrigation in a ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... of soil, however, may not have been so rapid in the flourishing days of Babylonian history, when the canals were carefully attended to and the irrigation of the country kept under control. It is safer, therefore, to assume for the period preceding the rise of the Macedonian Empire a rate of deposit of not more than one hundred feet each year. The seaport of primitive ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... the Rio Grande. The western side, however, is much broken by the Sierra Madre and its spurs, which form elevated valleys of great fertility. An arid sandy plain extending from the Rio Grande inland for 300 to 350 m. is quite destitute of vegetation where irrigation is not used. There is little rainfall in this region and the climate is hot and dry. The more elevated plateaus and valleys have the heavier rainfall, but the average for the state is barely 39 in.; an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... with an uninteresting landscape as regards variety,—plains, a few trees, and a little verdure stretched far away. Much of the land, however, was tilled, it being Springtime in this far-away country; and an occasional group of trees indicated what time and irrigation may accomplish in the way of agricultural results. At every station armed soldiers were on guard. Various theories were advanced to account for this; one said that brigands infested the country; another claimed that there might be danger of destruction to the track, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... plantation, here and there the aromatic bean grew wild, its ground usurped by the pita-plant, the acacia, and the thorny cactus. The dry reservoir and the ruined acequia proved the care that had in former times been bestowed on its irrigation. Guardarayas of palms and orange-trees, choked up with vines and jessamines, marked the ancient boundaries of the fields. Clusters of fruit and flowers hung from the drooping branches, and the aroma ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... working hard that day upon the system of irrigation by which they meant to reclaim and make really valuable their desert claims. They happened to be, at the time when the fire was started, six or seven miles away, wrangling over the best means of getting their main ditch around a certain coulee without building a lot of expensive flume. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... from destructive floods. Dams and reservoirs are constructed for the storage of water, which is led by a system of canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... captivity. Sir Eyre Coote did, indeed, keep the enemy in check, and defeat him in several battles, but had not at first sufficient numbers or stores effectually to drive him back; and the whole province of Tanjore was horribly wasted. The irrigation of the district had been broken up by the invaders; there was for three years neither seed-time nor harvest, and the miserable peasants crawled into the towns to perish there, often with their sons carried off to form a regiment of youths whom Hyder Ali was bringing ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sought to teach them more intelligent and productive methods of agriculture than the rude processes to which they were accustomed. In the valley of Fressiniere he built an aqueduct for purposes of irrigation, overcoming prejudice and opposition by beginning the work with his own hands. The example of Oberlin was constantly before him, and he often expresses his ambition to be to his people such a guide and helper as the pastor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... river Itchen, a clear and beautiful trout stream, much esteemed by fishermen. In the early years of Charles II. a canal was dug, beside the Itchen, for the conveyance of coal from Southampton. It was one of the first formed in England, and for two hundred years was constantly used by barges. The irrigation of the meadows was also much benefited, broad ditches being formed—"water carriages" as they are locally called—which conduct the streams in turn over the grass, so that even a dry season causes no drought, but they always lie green and fresh while the hills ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... northern districts where it was formerly cultivated merely for domestic use. The Communal system is, in fact, extremely elastic, and may be modified as soon as the majority of the members consider modifications profitable. When the peasants begin to think of permanent improvements, such as drainage, irrigation, and the like, they will find the Communal institutions a help rather than an obstruction; for such improvements, if undertaken at all, must be undertaken on a larger scale, and the Mir is an already existing association. The only permanent improvements which can be for the present profitably ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... to act as the agent of any man's revenge, he quit this work and went into the employment of the "V" ranch in the White mountains. He then moved down to Roswell again, in the spring of 1887. Here he organized the Pecos Valley Irrigation Company. He was the first man to suspect the presence of artesian water in this country, where the great Spring rivers push up from the ground; and through his efforts wells were bored which revolutionized all that valley. He ran for sheriff of Chaves county, and was defeated. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... but not hungry enough to kill these birds. Beaver dropped noisily into the water from trees that exhibited their marvellous carpentry, some lying prostrate, some half chiselled through. It seemed, indeed, as though the beaver were preparing great irrigation works all through this country. Since the law went into effect prohibiting their capture until 1915 they have increased and multiplied all over interior Alaska. They are still caught by the natives, but since their skins cannot be sold the Indians are wearing beaver garments ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... calamities are in nearly every instance capable of being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious instance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines and consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced by a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved cultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so forth. But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than to bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in directing ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... inhabitants, for they had made for the open desert. Where palm-trees grow, there are also human habitations and Government taxes. Anything green in the desert which is of lasting duration is the result of artificial irrigation. But if the sand brings forth no food for man or beast, its emptiness holds a world of prayers ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... collector a commissioner, the pipes are extended and enlarged, and all rejoice together. The moral beauty of this view of the situation grows upon you as you accustom your mind to dwell on it. Is it not pleasant to think of yourself as a beneficent irrigation work, watering a wide expanse of green pasture and smiling corn, or as a well in a happy garden, diffusing life and bloom? Look at the syce's children. Phil Robinson says there are nine of them, all about the same age and dressed in the same nakedness. As ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... this day a large portion of work is done by hand. One of the most common sights along the Nile is the shadoof. This is a long pole with a weight on one end and a bucket on the other. Hour after hour half dressed men and women will dip up water and pour it into irrigation ditches. Great wooden waterwheels are also used and an ox or donkey or man or woman or a blinded camel will go round and round and you can hear this wooden wheel squeak for a mile. The little buckets on the waterwheel keep an almost endless stream ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... was in hopes something would happen, so that this range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year. They've ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... runaway Austrian steed by proposing mediation in lieu of a Congress; but the result was only to delay the outbreak of the war for a week, much to the disadvantage of the Austrians, as it gave the French time to arrive and the Piedmontese to flood the country by means of the canals of irrigation, thus preventing a dash at Turin, probably the best chance for Austria. Baron von Kellersberg and his companion, during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity "this fine town so soon to be given over to the horrors of war." Their ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... thing is turned by the tread of men, and raising the water by means of the apertures in the face of the tympanum, delivers it through the holes next to the axle into a wooden trough set underneath, with a conduit joined to it. Thus, a large quantity of water is furnished for irrigation in gardens, or for supplying ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... former defense industries and test ranges are found throughout the country and pose health risks for humans and animals; industrial pollution is severe in some cities; because the two main rivers which flowed into the Aral Sea have been diverted for irrigation, it is drying up and leaving behind a harmful layer of chemical pesticides and natural salts; these substances are then picked up by the wind and blown into noxious dust storms; pollution in the Caspian Sea; soil pollution from overuse of agricultural chemicals and salinization from faulty irrigation ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of land, timber, minerals and manufacturing facilities before the general enhancement of values takes place. The benefits originally contemplated by the construction of the trans-continental roads are now only being felt in their intensity. Irrigation companies, heavily capitalized, are doing excellent work in reclaiming vast tracts which geographers declared lost to all future utility. Mining engineers who have made a very careful examination and survey ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless fertility of the soil—when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be made—with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow here—with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... regarding the practical usefulness of reservoirs to agriculture in the irrigated region of the United States, especially as affecting the distribution of water to crops, the area and value of reclaimed land, and the stability and unprofitableness of farming where irrigation is practised. ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... Caecus, whom Mommsen has shown to have been a friend of the people.[67] Forty years later another censor, Manius Curius Dentatus, brought a second supply, also by an underground channel, from the river Anio near Tibur (Tivoli), the water of which, never of the first quality, was used for the irrigation of gardens and the flushing of drains. In 144 B.C. it was found that these two old aqueducts were out of repair and insufficient, and this time a praetor, Q. Marcius Rex (probably through the influence of a family clique), was commissioned ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... on the evil and the good. How many Christians of the present day could be safely intrusted with the distribution of rainfall and sunshine? Those of us who dwell in lands that must be irrigated know that the type of Christianity that can be trusted to deal fairly with our irrigation system ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... Once that is proved, with the great Northwest of America almost untouched, with immense tracts of good land in Africa and other continents, and with the United States about to open up millions of acres of land, made fertile by means of irrigation, we shall be ready to act and get rid of the surplus city population. But first we must have the proof, and the question before us is whether the Salvation Army has ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray, in his belief 'that variations have been led along certain beneficial lines, as a stream is led along useful lines of irrigation.'"[13] ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... important place we were to approach was Jallica. For three days, our path coasted the southern edge of a mountain range, whose declivities and valleys were filled with rivers, brooks, and streamlets, affording abundant irrigation to fields teeming with vegetable wealth. The population was dense. Frequent caravans, with cattle and slaves, passed us on their way to various marts. Our supplies of food were plentiful. A leaf of tobacco purchased a fowl; a charge of powder obtained a basin of milk, or a dozen ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... tender deference. Out of doors, he showed how they might till the ground to greater advantage, and introduced an improved culture of the potato, which more than doubled the production. Observing how the pastures of Dormilhouse were scorched by the summer sun, he urged the adoption of a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... a face of tanned leather presently answered. "No, Tim, I expect not. The way I size him up Mr. Richard Bellamy wouldn't know Dry Sandy from an irrigation ditch. Mr. R. B. hopes he's hittin' the high spots for Sonora, but he ain't anyways sure. Right about now he's ridin' the grub line, unless he's made ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... for the application of these four ways of irrigation by which the garden is to be maintained; for without water it must fail. The comparison is to my purpose, and it seems to me that by the help of it I shall be able to explain, in some measure, the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... account for the steady upward progress we must resort to a higher Cause. We must say with Asa Gray, "Variation has been led along certain beneficial lines, like a stream along definite and useful lines of irrigation." We must say with Prof. Owen, "A purposive route of development and change, of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession of races as in the development and organization of the individual. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... clothing their families are prepared. In the country, the women share equally with their husbands and children in agricultural labours; early and late whole families may be seen in the paddy-fields transplanting rice, or superintending its irrigation, for which the undulating nature of the ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... needs the help of her women to modify law, custom and social life, the help of those women whose pioneer mothers stood shoulder to shoulder with the men in building up a great commonwealth out of a wilderness. Owing to the transitory character of many of the industries, such as the construction of irrigation works, railway construction and mining, there are nearly three times as many unattached men living outside of home influences as there are ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Lama's territory and then pass on to Zanskar and so down to Kashmir—a tremendous route through the Himalaya and a crowning experience of the mightiest mountain scenery in the world. I was at Ranipur for the purpose of consulting my old friend Olesen, now an irrigation official in the Rampur district—a man who had made this journey and nearly lost his life in doing it. It is not now perhaps so dangerous as it was, and my life was of no particular value to any one but myself, ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... retire to the bunk-house, and presently I would over hear laughter. But this was only in the morning. In the afternoon on many days of the summer which I spent at the Sunk Creek Ranch I would go shooting, or ride up toward the entrance of the canyon and watch the men working on the irrigation ditches. Pleasant systems of water running in channels were being led through the soil, and there was a sound of rippling here and there among the yellow grain; the green thick alfalfa grass waved ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... salination - the process through which fresh (drinkable) water becomes salt (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render soil incapable of supporting crops. siltation - occurs when water channels and reservoirs become clotted with silt and mud, a side effect of deforestation and soil erosion. slash-and-burn agriculture - a rotating cultivation ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... problem of regulating the Nile inundation so as to distribute the water for irrigation when and where it is most needed has been solved by the building of the Assuan dam. It lies across the head of the first cataract for a distance of a mile and a quarter, and creates a lake two hundred and forty miles in length. This great work was completed in 1912 A.D. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Dam has made feasible the irrigation of about 1-1/4 million acres of sage brush, bunch grass, and marginal wheat lands. Irrigation is already practised over other vast acreages. This land is level to rolling, and is of sandy loam nature. It is deeply under-laid by layers ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... also exported from there. Wine is made in very large quantities, and a lot of very good quality. The value of land varies very much. The greater portion is worth at present very little. The great point is to get the water concessions for irrigating; without irrigation the land is useless. A good vineyard in its prime, with good irrigation rights, is worth as much as from L40 to L50 per acre, while the ordinary camp land is at about 7s. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... form of periostitis the periosteum should be freely incised, followed either by continuous irrigation or frequent injection of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... instead, encountered a small but luxurious hotel, paved streets, shops, people dressed much as they had been in New York. She knew nothing of the changes that had taken place with the building of the great irrigation dam and the coming of the war factories which belched smoke back at the foot of the canyon. She did not realize that, twenty years ago, there had been no town, nothing but limitless plains on which cattle and sheep grazed, a crude ferry and a road house. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... before his eyes made his thoughts wander. Under the orange-trees and lemon-trees in rows, laden with their golden fruit, stretched immense fields of violets in regular and packed beds, separated by little irrigation canals, whose white stone ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of horses. After perhaps three hours' riding, we reached the Zamora River, which we followed for some distance. From the time when we began to follow this stream, our road was almost a dead level. At many places along the river, we saw a peculiar style of irrigation machine, a great wooden scoop or spoon with long handle swung between supporting poles. The instrument was worked by a single man and scooped up water from the river, throwing it upon the higher land and into canals which carried it through the fields. Sometimes two of these scoops were supported ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... fly. There the sun was setting over bleak New Mexican bluffs, Magdalena was at hand, and night, and adventure. Helen's heart beat fast. She watched the yellow plains where the cattle grazed; their presence, and irrigation ditches and cottonwood-trees told her that the railroad part of the journey was nearly ended. Then, at Bo's little scream, she looked across the car and out of the window to see a line of low, flat, red-adobe houses. The train began to ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... That's as true to-day as it was in forty-nine. And truer. Opportunities are greater, the need of men is more urgent. Right now, right to-day, I am looking for a man, a young man, who knows a thing or two about engineering, who can build bridges and cut irrigation ditches and save me money doing it." He threw out his hands. "And I ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... of land for purposes of rice cultivation went on vigorously during Suinin's reign. More than eight hundred ponds and aqueducts are said to have been constructed by order of the sovereign for irrigation uses throughout the provinces. It would seem, too, that the practice of formally consulting Court officials about administrative problems had its origin at this time. No definite organization for the purpose was yet created, but ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the advance in the arts of manuring, draining, irrigation, and of grafting and obtaining greater varieties of fruits and vegetables. The improvement in breeding and raising live-stock must not be omitted. In this product the wealth of the country was at least ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Territorial Irrigation Convention, in 1900, one woman was a duly elected delegate, taking part ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were put aside. One only remained. That the lines are actually the work of intelligence; actually are canals, artificially made, constructed for irrigation purposes on a scale of which we can hardly form any conception based on our own ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... high over the stone trough a half mile long that marked that dividing line. There was water in it; it was part of their irrigation system. A little beyond, in the midst of the green, stood a tiny flat-topped knoll on which he knew was a pool that supplied the crude system. Beyond it Loah and ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... all. He was modest enough about it, not having any special exploits to parade before their wondering eyes, but quite willing. His Western experiences being called for, he was soon telling, not of desert and cactus and irrigation, but of the people who had so taken his ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... does in a state of eternal vigilance, and knowing that the first death in the house or an unlucky combination of omens or the menaces of his enemies may drive him from his home and from his farm, he is content with a small clearing. He builds no embankments, no irrigation ditches, no terraces. He has no plows, nor draft animals. He selects a patch of the virgin forest every year, and with the bolo and rude axe, clears and cultivates the land. For a permanent crop he keeps his camote patch, on which he may plant a few bananas and also invariably a sprinkling ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... an enlightened ruler and a man of great simplicity of character. He takes a keen interest in the administration of his State, and has undertaken, at no small cost to his Exchequer, one of the most important irrigation works yet attempted in any Native State. But he committed what Tilak and his friends regarded as two unforgivable offences: he fought against the intolerance of the Brahmans and he is a faithful friend end ally ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... to the west of the Avenue line may be read "Heirs of John Rogers," "William W. Gilbert," "Nicholson" (the Christian name lies somewhere beyond the map horizon), and "Heirs of Henry Spingler." Irrigation is indicated by a line, running in a general northwesterly direction, bearing the name "Manetta Water," while a thinner line, joining the first line from the northeast, is described as "East Branch of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... still, to be performed by the community. Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow— the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps— is ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... to California and looked into the chestnut market there. We found them in the Sierras and found them growing in the Coast Range without irrigation, but the largest growers were in the San Joaquin Valley near Stockton. The largest grove was 30 acres at Linden owned by Caesar De Martini. He gave us our best insight into California chestnut growing. He used ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... in here to the fish ponds, and runs out and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that time it hadn't reached the flat of the Sacramento, I'd be pumping out the drainage for more irrigation." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... were openings in the midst of the forested area, and then the grassy ocean of prairie that rolled to west and northwest, until it passed beyond the line of sufficient rainfall for agriculture without irrigation, into the semi-arid stretches ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... cannot become productive until it receives the waters of irrigation, so the arid soul, if it is to become fruitful, must receive ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... enterprise bade fair for success, hampered only by the lack of capital, occasioned by Sandy's preference for modern methods as evidenced by thoroughbred bulls, high-grading of his steers, the steadily growing patches of alfalfa and the spreading network of irrigation ditches. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... river on the other side of the mountains. Hottentots came from Somerset with flour. Thatched huts replaced the tents. A few horses were obtained. Gardens were cleared and enclosed. Trenches for irrigation were cut. Trees were rooted out, and ploughs were set to work. Ten armed Hottentots were sent by the magistrates of the district to which they belonged, to guard and relieve them of night-watches, and with these came the news that ten of their friend ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... common practice before the eighteenth century, but there was something like it in places where hemp and flax would be alternated with cereals. Capitalists in the Netherlands built dykes, drained marshes and dug expensive canals. Elsewhere also swamps were drained and irrigation begun. But perhaps no single improvement in technique accounted for the greater yield of the land so much as the careful and watchful self-interest of the private owner, as against the previous semi-communistic ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Jew who visits Palestine in 1898 and then comes again in 1923 when he finds the Promised Land developed under Jewish influence. Its territory lies East and West of the Jordan. The dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the irrigation engineers. Technology had given a new form to labor, a new social and economic system had been created which is described as "mutualistic," a huge cooperative, a mediate form between individualism and ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... upward toward the sky, and falling off again in languorous swoons; villas blue and rose-colored, nestling in flowering gardens; white farmhouses half concealed behind green swirls of forest; spindling smokestacks of irrigation engines, with yellow sooty tops; Alcira, its houses clustered on the island and overflowing to the opposite bank, all of whitish, bony hue, pock-marked with tiny windows; beyond, Carcagente, the rival city, girdled in its belt of leafy orchards; off toward the sea, sharp, angular mountains, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of these sleeping forces irritated him: the waterfall, lost without leaving its energy anywhere; the ravine, which might be transformed into an irrigation reservoir; the river, which was flowing gently without fertilizing the fields; the land around the hermitage, which might have been converted into a park, with a bright, gay schoolhouse; all these things that could be done and were not done, seemed ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the jackal. When he appeared—and he usually did appear in a hurry—we gave him a couple of minutes' start and then tally-ho! and away after him over the plain. We had, of course, no fences to leap, but there were deep nullahs and irrigation dykes wide enough to give one something to think about. Moreover, the jackals were astonishingly speedy; they would twist and turn and double on their tracks for half an hour at a stretch, and they were game to ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... coolies from China to Australia, Natal, or the Feegee Islands, to raise his cotton and help put down Secession and export-duties, or whether he shall give a new stimulus to India cotton by railways and irrigation. He seems to prosper in all his business; for the "Edinburgh Review" reports him worth six thousand millions of pounds, at least,—a very comfortable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... lowlands and lagoons of the Rumanian side. Northern Bulgaria is watered by the Lom, Ogust, Iskr, Vid, Osem, Yantra and Eastern Lom, all, except the Iskr, rising in the Balkans, and all flowing into the Danube. The channels of these rivers are deeply furrowed and the fall is rapid; irrigation is consequently difficult and navigation impossible. The course of the Iskr is remarkable: rising in the Rilska Planina, the river descends into the basin of Samakov, passing thence through a serpentine defile into the plateau of Sofia, where in ancient times it formed a lake; it now ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
