“Indeed there was,” was the answer. “The Indians were the first irrigators. The Pueblo or village Indians, as they were called, while it was in a crude way, irrigated all the land on which they raised corn. They were the first settlers of the Rio Grande Valley. We know this is so, for one of the Spanish Conquistadores, Coronado by name, wrote it down in the record of his travels. When he marched from the south into what is now New Mexico in search of the gold which was the aim and hope of all the adventurers of his time, he found the Indians irrigating the land by means of crude ditches dug with their primitive implements. This was the first record we have, but it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that such irrigation as he found was practiced here by this river that flows below us long before Columbus discovered America. The theory is that in all probability irrigation along the Rio Grande was in vogue even before the Egyptians used the waters of the Nile for the same purpose. When the first Spanish settlers came along, and later the Americans, they adopted the same methods of making the ground productive as had the Indians. All we have done as time went on is to improve the general principles taken from the savages. Of course, as we made better tools, we have been able to build larger ditches and so increase the area of fertile land far beyond the dreams of the Indians.”
dear.chart, “Come along,” he directed. “Talk as we go!”
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dear.chart Night returned, and Ferdinand repaired to the chamber of Julia to pursue his enquiry. Here he had not long remained, when the strange and alarming sounds which had been heard on the preceding night were repeated. The circumstance that now sunk in terror the minds of Emilia and Julia, fired with new wonder that of Ferdinand, who seizing a light, darted through the discovered door, and almost instantly disappeared..
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