It happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on foot an inquiry into the
irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch's department, and was a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms.
Pivart, who, having lands higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their
irrigation, which either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that water was water), an infringement on Mr.
All the windows and doors had been taken away, and sufficiently large holes were conspicuous in the dilapidated roofs, but the surrounding land was laid out in fields that were highly cultivated, and the old garden spaces had been turned into meadows, watered by a system of
irrigation as artfully contrived as that in use in Limousin.
North they drove, through days of heat and dust, across the California plains, and everywhere was manifest the "new" farming--great
irrigation ditches, dug and being dug, the land threaded by power-lines from the mountains, and many new farmhouses on small holdings newly fenced.
He understood
irrigation and the art of war--the qualities of weapons and the craft of boat-building.
The experience was of some years ago in China, far up-country, towards the head-waters of the Yang-tze-kiang, where the smaller tributaries spread out in a sort of natural
irrigation scheme to supply the wilderness of paddy-fields.
Men were at work here and there--for it was the season for "taking up" the meadows, or digging the little waterways clear for the winter
irrigation, and mending their banks where trodden down by the cows.
The tiny
irrigation channels were every where, and along some of them the water was running.
If it could open 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 bear rich harvests.
It grows easily with little
irrigation and the trees bear abundantly.
On these fringes the roads are generally carried, for their surfaces are even, and they rise, with a very gentle slope up the valleys: hence, also, they are easily cultivated by
irrigation. They may be traced up to a height of between 7000 and 9000 feet, where they become hidden by the irregular piles of debris.
But it is a round shaft, like that of a well, and probably a part of some great
irrigation works of remote and disputed date, perhaps more ancient than anything in that ancient land.