What I know of farming:

XLV.

SEWAGE

The great empires of antiquity were doomed to certain decay and dissolution by a radical vice inherent in their political and social constitution. Power rapidly built up a great capital, whereto population was attracted from every quarter; and that capital became a focus of luxury and consumption. Grain, Meat, and Vegetables – the fat of the land and the spoils of the sea – were constantly absorbed by it in enormous quantities; while nothing, or, at best, very little, was returned therefrom to the continually exhausted and impoverished soil. Thus, a few ages, or at most a few centuries, sufficed to divest a vast surrounding district, first, of its fertility, ultimately of its capacity for production. And so Nineveh, Thebes, Babylon, successively ceased to be capitals, and became ruins amid deserts. Rome impoverished Italy south of the Apennines; then Sicily; and, at last, Egypt: her sceptre finally departing, because her millions could no longer be fed without dispersion.

That some means must be devised whereby to return to the soil those elements which the removal of crop after crop inevitably exhausts, is a truth which has but recently begun to be clearly understood. Unluckily, the difficulty of such restoration is seriously augmented by the fact that cities, and all considerable aggregations of human beings, tend strongly in our day to locations by the sea-side, in valleys, and by the margins of rivers. Anciently, cities and villages were often built on hill-tops, or at considerable elevations, because foes could be excluded or repelled from such locations more surely, and with smaller force, than elsewhere. From such elevations, it need not have been difficult to diffuse, by means of water, all that could be gladly spared which would aid to fertilize the adjacent farms and gardens. A kindred distribution of the exuviæ of our modern cities is a far more difficult and costly undertaking, and involves bold and skillful engineering.

Yet the problem, though difficult, must be solved, or our great cities will be destroyed by their own physical impurities. The growth and expansion of cities, throughout the present century, have been wholly beyond precedent; and thus the difficulty of making a satisfactory disposition of their offal has been fearfully augmented. The sewerage of our streets and houses modifies the problem, but does not solve it. Desolating epidemics, like the Plague, Yellow Fever, and the Cholera, will often visit our great cities, and decimate their people, unless means can be found to cleanse them wholly and incessantly of whatever tends to pollute and render noisome their atmosphere.

Sewage is the term used in England to designate water which, having been slightly impregnated with the feculence and ordure of a city or village, is diffused over a farm or farms adjacent, in order to impart at once fertility and moisture to its soil. To secure an equable and thorough dissemination of Sewage, it is essential that the land to which it is applied, if not originally level or nearly so, shall be brought into such condition that the impregnated water may be applied to its entire surface, and shall thence settle into, moisten, and fertilize, each cubic inch of the soil. This involves a very considerable initial outlay; but the luxuriance of the crops unfailingly produced, under the influence of this vivifying irrigation, abundantly justifies and rewards that outlay.

As yet, the application of Sewage is in its infancy; since the perfect and total conversion of all that a great city excretes into the most available food for plants, requires not only immense mains and reservoirs, with a costly network of distributing dykes or ditches, but novel appliances in engineering, and a large investment of time as well as money. Years must yet elapse before all the excretions of a great city like London or New-York can thus be transmuted into the means of fertilizing whole counties in their vicinity. But the work is already well begun, and another generation will see it all but completed. Meantime, many smaller cities, more eligibly located for the purpose, are already enriching by their Sewage the rural districts adjacent, which they had previously tended strongly to impoverish. Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is among them. The little village of Romford, England, is one of those which have recently been made to contribute by Sewage to this beneficent end; and a visit of inspection paid to it, on the 15th of October last, by the London Board of Works, elicited accounts of the process and its results, in the London journals, which afforded hints for and incitement to similar undertakings in this and other countries – undertakings which may be postponed, but the only question is one of time. The Daily News of Oct. 17th, says:

"Breton's Farm consists of 121 acres of light and poor gravelly soil; and it now receives the whole available sewage of the town of Romford – that is, of about 7,000 persons. This is conveyed to the land by an iron pipe of 18 inches in diameter, which is laid under ground, and discharges its contents into an open tank. From this tank, the sewage is pumped to a height of 20 feet, and is then distributed over the land by iron or concrete troughs, or 'carriers,' fitted with sluices and taps, so that the amount of sewage applied to any given portion of the field can be regulated with the greatest facility and nicety. To insure the regular and even flow of the sewage when discharged from the carriers, it was necessary to lay out the land with mathematical accuracy; and it has been leveled and formed by the theodolite into rectilinear beds of uniform width of thirty feet, slightly inclining from the centres, along which the sewage is applied. The carriers or open troughs, by which the sewage is conveyed, run along the top of each series of these beds or strikes; and at the bottom there is in every case a good road, by means of which free access is provided for a horse and cart, or for the steam plow – the use of which is in contemplation – to every bed and crop. These arrangements – the carrying out of which involved the removal of six hundred trees and a great length of heavy fences, the filling up of a number of ditches and no less than nine ponds, as well as the complete underdraining of the whole farm – were mainly effected last year; but it was not until the middle of April, 1870, that Mr. Hope received any of this sewage from the town of Romford, and not until the following month that he obtained both the day and night supply. Satisfactory, therefore, as have been the results of the present season's operations, they have been obtained under disadvantageous circumstances, and cannot be regarded as affording complete evidence of the benefits which may be derived from the application of sewage to even a poor and thin soil, which had already ruined more than one of those who had attempted to cultivate it. To mention only one drawback which arose from the lateness of the period at which the sewage was first received, Mr. Hope had not the advantage of being able to apply it to his seed-beds: and thus many, if not all his plants were not ready for setting out so early as they would be in a future year, and some of the crops have suffered in consequence – that is to say, have suffered in a comparative sense. Speaking positively, they have in all instances been much larger, not only than any that could have been grown upon the same land without the use of sewage, but than any which have been raised from much superior land in the immediate neighborhood. The crops which have been or are being raised on different parts of the firm, are of diverse character; but, with all, the method of cultivation adopted has been attended with almost equal success. Italian rye-grass, beans, peas, mangolds, carrots, broccoli, cabbages, savoys, beet-root, Batavia yams, Jersey cabbages, and Indian corn, have all grown with wonderful rapidity and yielded abundant harvests under the stimulating and nourishing influence of the Romford sewage. The visitors of Saturday last, as they tramped over the farm under the guidance of its energetic proprietor, had an opportunity of witnessing the abundance and excellence of many of these crops. Even where the mangolds, from being planted late, had not attained any extraordinary size, it was noticeable that the plants were especially vigorous, and that there was not a vacant space in any of the rows. All the plants which had been placed in the ground had thriven, and would give a good return. Where this crop had been specially treated with a view to forthcoming shows, the roots had attained an enormous size, and, like some of the cabbages, had assumed almost gigantic proportions. The carrots were very fine and well-grown, and the heads of the Walcheren broccoli were as white, and firm, and crispy, as the finest cauliflowers; while the savoys, of unusual size and weight, were as round and hard as cannon balls; and some of the drumhead cabbages, although equally distinguished for closeness and firmness, were large enough in the heart to hold a good-sized child, and might, as was suggested upon the ground, very well be introduced into some pantomimic scene representing the kingdom of Brobdingnag. The Indian corn had reached the respectable height of some eight feet, and, with few exceptions, each stalk carried a good-sized and well-filled cob or ear. These, unless we should have another spell of exceptionally hot weather, will not ripen; but in their green state they are readily eaten by horses and cattle, and prove excellent fodder.

In the course of their peregrinations, Mr. Hope's guests of course paid a visit to the tank in which the sewage is received before it is pumped on the land. We need hardly say that the appearance of this miniature lake of nastiness was anything but agreeable; but its odor was by no means overpowering, nor, indeed, very offensive. The rill of bright, clear water which flowed in at one corner, and some of which was handed about in tumblers, looking as pure as the limpid stream which flows from the most effective filters that are to be seen in the windows of London dealers, had only a short time before flowed out of this hideous reservoir in a very different state. We had met it in the "carriers" flowing along in a dark, inky stream, not smelling much, but covered with an ugly gray froth which reminded one of some of the most disagreeable details in the manufacture of sugar and rum, or suggested the idea that it had been used for a very foul wash indeed. With these reminiscences fresh in one's memory, it required some courage to comply with the pressing invitations to taste this 'effluent water.' There were, however, many of the party who braved the attempt; and, by all who tasted it, the water was pronounced to be destitute of any except a slightly mineral flavor. In dry weather, this effluent water, which has passed through the land and been collected by the drains, after mixing with the sewage, is again pumped over the fields; in wet weather, it can be turned into the brook which is dignified with the name of the river Rom. * * * We have omitted to mention that the rent paid by Mr. Hope is £3 per acre, and the cost of the sewage (at 2s. per head) £6 more."

– I think few thoughtful readers will doubt that here is the germ of a great movement in advance for the Agriculture of all old and densely peopled communities, and that our youngest cities and manufacturing villages may wisely consider it deeply, with a view to its ultimate if not early imitation. That we are not prepared to incur the inevitable expense of a thorough system of sewerage with reference to the application to the soil of all the fertilizing elements that a city would gladly spare, by no means proves that we should not consider and plan with a view to the ultimate creation and utilization of Sewage.

XLVI.

MORE OF IRRIGATION

I have thus far considered Irrigation with special reference to those limited, yet very considerable districts, which are traversed or bordered by living streams, and, having a level or slightly rolling surface, present obvious facilities for and incitements to the operation. Such are the valleys of the Platte, and of nearly or quite all its affluents after they leave the Rocky Mountains; such is the valley of the upper Arkansas; such the valleys of the Smoky Hill and the Republican, so far down as Irrigation may be considered necessary. Irrigation on all these seems to me inevitable, and certain to be speedily, though capriciously, effected.

I believe a dam across either fork of the Platte, at any favorable point above their junction, raising the surface of the stream six feet, at a cost not exceeding $10,000, would suffice to irrigate completely not less than fifty square miles of the valley below it, while serving at the same time to furnish power for mills and factories to a very considerable extent; for the need of Irrigation is not incessant, but generally confined to two or three months per annum, and all of the volume of the stream not needed for Irrigation could be utilized as power. Thus the valleys of the few constant water-courses of the Plains may come at an early day to employ and subsist a dense and energetic population, engaged in the successful prosecution alike of agriculture and manufactures, while belts, groves, and forests, of choice, luxuriant timber, will diversify and embellish regions now bare of trees, and but thinly covered with dead herbage from June until the following April.

But, when we rise above the bluffs, and look off across the blank, bleak areas where no living water exists, the problem becomes more difficult, and its solution will doubtless be much longer postponed. To a stranger, these bleak uplands seem sterile; and, though such is not generally the fact, the presumption will repel experiments which involve a large initial outlay. The railroad companies, which now own large tracts of these lands, will be obliged either to demonstrate their value, or to incite individuals and colonists to do it by liberal concessions. As the case stands to-day, most of these lands, which would have been dear at five cents per acre before the roads were built, could not be sold at any price to actual settlers, even with the railroad in plain sight, because of the dearth of fuel and timber, and because also the means of rendering them fruitful and their cultivation profitable are out of reach of the ordinary pioneer. Hence, so long as the valleys of the living streams proffer such obvious invitations to settlement and tillage, by the aid of Irrigation, I judge that the higher and dryer plains will mainly be left to the half-savage herdsmen who rear cattle and sheep without feeding and sheltering them, by giving them the range of a quarter-section to each bullock, and submitting to the loss of a hundred head or so after each great and cold snow-storm, as an unavoidable dispensation of Providence.

But in process of time even the wild herdsmen will be softened into or replaced by regular farmers, plowing and seeding for vegetables and small grains, sheltering their habitations with trees, and sending their children to school. This change involves Irrigation; and the following are among the ways in which it will be effected:

The Plains are nowhere absolutely flat (as I presume the "desert" of Sahara is not), but diversified by slopes, and swells, and gentle ridges or divides, affording abundant facilities for the distribution of water. A well, sunk on the crest of one of these divides, will be filled with living water at a depth ranging from 50 to 100 feet. A windmill of modest dimensions placed over this well will be rarely stopped for want of impelling power: Wind being, next to space, the thing most abundant on the Plains. A reservoir or pond covering three or four acres may be made adjacent to the well at a small cost of labor, by excavating slightly and using the earth to form an embankment on the lower side. The windmill, left alone, will fill the reservoir during the windy Winter and Spring months with water soon warmed in the sun, and ready to be drawn off as wanted throughout the thirsty season of vegetable growth and maturity. Carefully saved, the product of one well will serve to moisten and vivify a good many acres of grass or tillage.