Wealth of the Worlds Waste Places and Oceania | Page 8

Aztecs
making extensive canals. Remains of great irrigation works are found
to-day in Arizona and New Mexico, where our modern engineers
wisely adopt the canal routes which were established by a race now
extinct.
At the present time India is irrigating twenty-five million acres of land,
the United States thirteen million, Egypt seven million, and Italy three
million. It is estimated that the United States has left one hundred and
eighty million acres of arid and semi-arid land available for reclamation
and four times as much that is incapable of being reclaimed.
No other question of to-day is of such vital and far-reaching importance
as that of the reclamation of the millions of acres of sleeping arid lands
in the western part of our country. Mines may be exhausted, forests

slain, and cities annihilated, but wastes made fruitful through the
potency of water will remain everlasting sources of wealth to the
nation.
During the last few years our government has been very active in
promoting irrigation by building impounding dams and constructing
canals and tunnels for the delivery of water. In connection with the
various irrigation works the government has already established five
hydro-electric plants which furnish water, motive power, and light as
may be required. From the big Roosevelt Dam and the drops of the
level in the canal connected therewith, twenty-six thousand
horse-power will be developed incidental to the reclamation of two
hundred thousand acres of land.
The miracle-working agent, water, has already reclaimed thirteen
million acres of our domain, and these areas now produce two hundred
and sixty million dollars annually; moreover, they furnish homes to
more than three hundred thousand people. Prosperous rural
communities with thousands of happy, rosy-cheeked children,
blooming orchards, broad, fertile fields prolific beyond comparison,
and flourishing cities replace wastes of sand and sage-brush.
The United States Government alone has spent already sixty millions of
dollars under the Reclamation Act which went into effect in 1902, and
the end is not yet, for as the vista of human achievements in this line
broadens still greater works will be inaugurated and successfully
consummated. In Arizona, California, Colorado, South Dakota,
Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming the
United States Government already is working on or has completed
twenty-six important irrigation projects.
The most wonderful work combining the highest engineering skill and
daring is found in the western part of Colorado, where from Black
Canyon, an almost inaccessible gorge three thousand feet deep, the
whole Gunnison River has been diverted to the Uncompahgre Valley.
To take the water out of the river it was necessary to bore a tunnel six
miles long through a mountain from the canyon to the valley.

To determine the feasibility of diverting the course of the river, it was
first necessary to make an exploration of the canyon. No one before had
ever had the hardihood to even make the attempt, on account of the
extreme danger of a journey between the narrow black walls of this
gloomy abyss.
In 1853 Captain Gunnison discovered the river which bears his name.
He traced its course to where it plunged into a chasm so deep and
dangerous that he feared to follow it farther and named the gorge Black
Canyon. Some twenty years later Professor Hayden of the United
States Geological Survey, looking over the brink of the abyss, declared
it inaccessible.
The State of Colorado, desiring to find some way of utilizing the waters
of the Gunnison River for irrigating the arid land adjacent, in 1900
called for volunteers to explore the canyon. Five men responded.
Provided with boats, life-lines, and other accessories, the men started
from Cimarron on their perilous trip. On the third day their provisions
gave out, and later they were obliged to abandon their boats and nearly
everything else except their blankets, which were protected in rubber
bags. They knew it was impossible to retrace their steps and that their
only salvation lay in going on. At night they rolled themselves up in
their blankets and tried to encourage one another. They travelled
fourteen miles between granite walls from two thousand to three
thousand feet high; and for sixteen days they were almost without food.
Then they came to a cleft in their prison walls which seemed to offer a
means of escape.
At their feet the water plunged over a precipice down to an unknown
depth. To go on meant almost instant death. They were dying of
starvation. Should they go on? They had not accomplished their task.
Life was sweet and there were loved ones dependent upon them for
support.
So they decided to attempt escape while they had strength. Wearily
they climbed the steep and rugged path that led them to freedom.
Starting early in the morning, they reached the summit, two thousand

five hundred feet