time being by the Government. Most of this territory will eventually be thrown.

open.

It is impossible to state what kinds of lands these are which are above enumerated, because the Government possesses no such data. Furthermore, it is not the policy of the Land Office to give out information about the character of soil, climate, water, or timber.

At the present time, however, the Government is engaged in carrying out a number of gigantic irrigation projects, the object of which is to make available for settlement vast areas of arid lands in various parts of the West. These lands are among the richest in all the world, and only need a water supply in order to produce crops such as are undreamed of in the East. One of the enterprises in question, by tapping Lake Tahoe, has. rendered suitable for farming purposes the immense tract already referred to, in north-central Nevada.

It is these irrigable lands that now afford a really attractive invitation to home - makers. Immense areas of them are being made available

by the Reclamation Service, which to-day has on hand for the purpose $34,000,000, thanks to the liberality of Congress, and which, notwithstanding the great rate of current expenditure, will have in June, 1908, $41,500,000. Twenty-two "projects" have been begun, and contracts already let involve the spending of $25,000,000; in addition to which plans that will cost $15,000,000 more are contemplated for the immediate future.

For example, take the so-called North Platte project, the object of which is the storage of the flood and surplus waters of the North Platte river by a dam 210 feet high, built across a narrow canyon. During the dry season the water thus conserved will be turned into canals, and distributed over an area of hundreds of thousands of acres in Nebraska and Wyoming.

This project is now finished, and application for land should be addressed to the Land Office at Cheyenne, Wyo., or at Sidney, Neb. Information about soil and climate, with other details, will be furnished to anybody who wants it, by the

North Platte Valley Water Users' Association.

In Nevada, the wonderful TruckeeCarson project, which will irrigate 350,000 acres of arid territory in the western part of that State, is already approaching completion. It has involved the taking of the Truckee river out of its bed by

means of a canal thirtyone miles long and carrying it over bodily into another valley-that of the Carson river. This is in its way the most remarkable engineering achievement ever known. It will cost nine millions of dollars, which the settlers will pay by handing over to Uncle Sam $2.60 for each acre of land every year for ten years.

These are not charitable enterprises in which the Government is engaged. Uncle Sam pays the entire cost of irrigation projects, to start with; and the money paid back to him, as fast as it comes in, will be used to liquidate the expense of further operations in the same line. As soon as he turns the water on, he begins to get returns; and already he is beginning to recover some of his money, the first payments being made this autumn.

It is understood, then, that the Gov

ernment gives the land, and the settler pays only for the water. For ten years he must live on the land, in order to acquire his final title, and he is not allowed to complete his payments before the end of that time. Nor can he sell the property-which, by the way, may be in area anywhere from 10 to 160 acres. It is the Secretary of the Interior who determines what in any given locality shall be a "farm unit"-that is, the amount of land that can be acquired by any one entry-man. This depends upon the area that seems to be required to afford a decent living for a family. If the soil is extremely rich, and the water supply is unlimited, it may be as small as ten acres; most commonly it is either forty or eighty acres.

The Reclamation Act, under which these regulations are made, was passed, and was signed by President Roosevelt, in June, 1902. It is the wisest and best land law we have ever had, providing, as it does, for home-makers exclusively, and eliminating all possibility of speculation. Before being entitled to a patent of ownership, the entry-man is required to pay the entire charges for water; and he must show that he has reclaimed for farming purposes at least one-half of the total irrigable area assigned to him.

Some of the tasks undertaken by the government experts have been so extraordinary as to approach the spectacular. For instance, a few years ago, large numbers of settlers rushed into the Uncompahgre valley, in Colorado-a veritable Paradise on earth-and took

up every foot of land. But there was not enough water to go round; crops failed in consequence, and the people were threatened with the loss of their homes. They appealed to Uncle Sam for help, calling attention to the fact that the Gunnison river, with an unlimited supply of water, flowed only a few miles away-the only trouble being that a mountain range six miles thick and more than half a mile high intervened.

Yes, there was plenty of water, if they could only get at it. It could not be fetched over the mountain range; so, ob

viously, the only possibility was to bring it through by tunnel. A more difficult task could hardly be imagined, inasmuch as the Gunnison flows through a deep canyon of so rugged a character that no man had ever been known to go into it at one end and come out alive at the other. Nevertheless, two government engineers, A. L. Fellows and W. W. Torrence, made up their minds that they would see what could be done. The only way to get into the canyon was by ropes,

and by such means they reached its bottom, taking with them a supply of food, surveying instruments, a rubber mattress, and a small boat.

The instruments were strapped to the mattress, which was one of those rubber affairs that can be blown up. When their boat was smashed, they swam, with the help of the mattress, and from time to time climbed upon slippery rocks and made observations. The water, it should be remembered, was icy cold; the stream

was a torrent, and every few hundred yards there was a cataract. Nevertheless they kept "on the job," and carefully tied their notes (wrapped in oilskin) to their bodies, in order that, in case they lost their lives, these precious memoranda should be preserved.

Comrades who followed them along the canyon wall above, lost sight of them at length, and gave them up for dead. For two days they waited for the bodies to come out at the lower end, while the two brave fellows, naked and with nothing to eat, both mattress and instruments having finally been lost, were tryingstill alive, but with small hope of eventual survival-to discover a practicable path of escape from the gloomy chasm. At length they were discovered by their friends and dragged out with ropes by way of a precipitous cleft in the cliffs, called the "Devil's Slide." They were so weak that they had to be carried to camp, where Fellows immediately sat down and wrote a telegram to Washington. It read: "The Gunnison canyon is feasible." Then he fainted away.

What he meant by "feasible" was that he and his companion had found a place in the canyon from which a tunnel could be started through the mountain range. In order to begin the work, a wagon road had first to be cut down the wall of the chasm, a power house being erected to contain the requisite machinery. At the same time a beginning was made on the other side of the mountain. The tunnel, eleven by twelve feet, lined with cement, will be finished in 1908; it will cost $2,000,000, and will carry 13,000 cubic feet of water every second, irrigating 135,000 acres. In this undertaking the world's record for rapidity in tunnel-boring has been broken. The area thus made available is richly productive of fruits, yielding the finest apples in the world. It is also adapted for the growing of grain, sugar beets, and alfalfa.

This is only a sample enterprise in the way of irrigating projects. In another case, in New Mexico, a New Mexico, a vast artificial lake is to be created in a basin in the hills, a whole river being turned into it; and, to make the enclosure complete, five gaps between mountains have had to be stopped by dams. Another task has involved the carrying of water from the

Colorado river, by means of a gigantic siphon, directly under the Gila river, to moisten the mesa lands on the other side.

The Yuma project, in California, contemplates the diversion of the waters of the Colorado river, by a dam and sluiceways, ten miles northwest of Yuma, into two canals, one on each side of the stream. In Arizona, these canals will irrigate all the bottom lands of the Colorado and Gila rivers, between the dam and the Mexican boundary (84,000 acres); and in California, the bottom

lands of the Yuma Reservation, comprising 17,000 acres in addition.

In Idaho, by the Minidoka project, 130,000 acres on both sides of Snake river, in the southern part of the State, will be watered. The soil is a deep, sandy loam, now producing a thrifty growth of sage brush. Another tract of 350,000 acres in the valleys of the Snake, the Boisé, and the Payette, will be made available for agriculture by extensive storage reservoirs at the headwaters of the Payette and Boisé. Several years must elapse, however, before this project is completed.

These are only a few of the projects now under way; but, in running over them, one should not forget to mention one that is being carried out in Wyoming, by which a part of the Shoshone river is to be diverted from its course and stored by an enormous dam at the head of a canyon. By this means a huge artificial lake will be created, which in the dry season will supply an area of about 175,000 acres the tract in ques