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ARTESIAN WELLS, RESERVOIRS, AND AGRICULTURE.

If we except the irrigated lands of the Pecos valley, and those of the Rio Grande bottom from El Paso to San Elizario, a very small portion only of the Trans-Pecos country is utilized for agricultural or horticultural purposes.

The settlements of Lanoria, on the mesa northeast of El Paso, irrigated by windmills, a few hundred acres along the Limpia creek in the Davis mountains, and a few scattered farms on the Toyah creek, and in other places, are all the attempts at agriculture that came under my observation west of the Pecos river.

The want of rain in seasonable time is no doubt the principal reason that millions of acres of fertile soil are not utilized at all, or only to support a limited number of cattle, sheep, and horses. And even these not only suffer, but in many localities frequently die for want of water and grass, and at the same time must be counted with the desert forming causes in West Texas, as I shall show farther on in this report.

Commissions to classify the lands of Trans-Pecos Texas and to study the conditions were sent out in times when traveling there was in many places not only connected with insuperable obstacles, but at the same time very dangerous on account of Indians.

No wonder, then, that the observations of such commissions were superficial, partly based on hearsay, on information given by parties who might have now and then had considerable interest in misrepresenting the conditions for better or for worse, or who, even when they informed with conscientious honesty, were misinformed themselves, or gave information about the condition of certain limited districts only, and in most cases, though eminently fit cattlemen of the old style, had never a thought of assisting nature to provide food and water for their herds, or to use the large flats for anything else than free grass pastures.

Circumstances have changed since then. Free grazing is abolished by law, though in many places practically continued; the demand for leased pastures limited, and we have to meet the questions, can anything be done to utilize the public lands of Trans-Pecos Texas? and what can or must be done?

The irrigation of these lands by artesian wells is out of question. The truth of the theoretical reasons for the improbability, if not impossibility, of artesian conditions west of the divide in Trans-Pecos Texas (which was brought forward by me some years ago), is now fully established by the failure of the Southern Pacific and Texas Pacific Railways to find artesian water (flowing to the surface). The borings along both of these railroads show that even good pumping wells are rather the exception than the rule.