stern States who visit New Mexico for the
first time are attracted by many unusual sights. There are the
interesting little donkeys, the low adobe houses of the native
Mexicans, and the water ditches winding through the gardens and
fields, which are divided into squares by low ridges of earth.

If the fields are seen in the winter time, when dry and barren,
the meaning of their checkered appearance is not at first clear,
but in the spring and summer one is not long in finding out all
about them. When the time comes to sow the seed, water is turned
into these squares from the ditches which traverse the valleys,
and one square at a time is filled until the ground in each is
thoroughly soaked. Afterward, when the ground has dried enough
to be easily worked, the crop is put in. The seeds soon sprout
under the influence of the warm sun, and the land becomes green
with growing plants. The same method of moistening the ground is
used for the orchards and vineyards.

What is the use of all this work? Why not wait for the rains to
come and wet the earth, as the farmer does in the eastern United
States? The Mexicans, who have tilled these valleys for more than
two hundred years, ought certainly to have learned in all that
time how to get the best returns. You may be sure that they would
not water the ground in this way if it were not necessary. The fact
is that over a large portion of the western half of the United
States it does not rain enough to enable the farmer to grow his
crops. The climate is generally very different from that of the
Middle and Eastern States.

When the Mexicans moved northward into the valley of the Rio Grande
River, into Arizona and California, they found a climate similar in
many respects to that at home, and soon learned that it was necessary
to water the land artificially in order to make it productive. Though
in many places sufficient rain fell, yet the heaviest rainfall
came in the late summer or winter, when the plants needed it less,
while the spring and summer were long and dry. The Mexicans were
not the first to practise watering the land, if we may judge from
the ruins of ancient ditches constructed by the primitive Indian
inhabitants. It is evident that they too made use of water in this
manner for the growing of their corn and squashes.

This turning of water upon the land to make it productive is termed
"irrigation." The work is performed in different ways, as we shall
see later. Irrig