urveyed by the United States Government
is estimated at 927,000 acre feet, sufficient to water 600,000 acres.
Less than a third of this is at present cultivated and watered from
small canals, built by private capital, and from the two largest ones in
the state, constructed by the U. S. Reclamation Service. These latter
are the Tieton, with water sufficient for 34,500 acres, and the
Sunnyside, capable of irrigating 100,000 acres.

A journey along the banks of these canals or the Yakima river unfolds a
panorama of unusual breadth and interest. Instead of the heavy forests
of the west side, the sage brush struggles for existence just above the
main ditches; but the country below is checkered with orchards, farms,
and gardens; and cotton woods protect the banks of the streams.
Impressive is the sight in springtime when fruit trees are all in bloom
and the Blossom Festival, participated in by a hundred-thousand people,
is ushering in the full tide of spring; or in autumn when deeper touches
of color mark an immense crop ready for the harvester.

[Illustration: A HOME NEAR ELLENSBURG.]

From the hills on either side, the picture assumes its most perfect
form. Cities, meadows, orchards, vineyards, hop fields, vegetable
gardens, alfalfa farms, corn fields, and prairies, bisected and
crisscrossed by railroads, highways, canals, and rivers, protected by
the brown hills near by and watched over by the mountains in the
distance, supply composition for pictures that in detail and variety
must discourage all competition.

THE WENATCHEE VALLEY.

Equally beautiful but of smaller dimensions is the Wenatchee Valley,
reaching from the Columbia well up into the foot hills of the Cascades.
This, too, was a desolate brown slope until the effects of irrigation
were felt on its rich volcanic ash soil. After that only ten years were
necessary to convert it into a garden of dazzling splendor. Instead of
the forlorn looking sagebrush, a maze of orchards, extending up the
valley and ascending the hills, presents in springtime a solid mass of
blossoms, varying from purest white to daintiest shades of pink.
Serpentining along the hill sides, as if protecting the gardens below,
are the great viaducts, conducting the precious waters that irrigate the
land; while dodging from one side of the vale to the other, or
paralleling the Great Northern Railroad, the Wenatchee river hastens
onward towards the Columbia.

The north, south, and west are gu