All the flourishing towns of southern California depend for their
wonderful prosperity upon the fertility of the irrigated country
surrounding them.
Trees and plants require water for their growth, but they do not all
need it in like quantity, nor at the same time; therefore, the
scientific farmer on arid lands, where there is an abundance of water
for irrigation, has an immense advantage over his Eastern brother who
depends for water upon the rainfall alone.
While the valuable raisin crop of the Californian is drying in the sun
and the slightest shower would damage, or perhaps ruin it, just beyond
lies the orange orchard, the trees of which are suffering for water. The
fruit, the size of a large walnut, is still hard and green, and must
have an abundance of the life-giving liquid if it is to develop into the
rich yellow orange, filled with delicious juice, which adorns the New
Year's market. How would our ranchman prosper if he depended upon rain?
As it is, he furrows his orchard from its highest to its lowest level;
then into the flume which runs parallel with the highest boundary of the
grove he turns the water from pipe or reservoir, and opening the
numerous little slide-doors or sluice-gates of the flume, soon has the
satisfaction of seeing each furrow the bed of a running stream, the
water of which sinks slowly, steadily, down to the roots of the thirsty
trees.
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