Excerpt from The Conquest of Arid America

IN the summer of 1899, on a remote ranch in the desert country of Northeastern California, twelve miles from the nearest house (and no one living there, as my wife caustically remarked) I put the finishing touches to the first edition of this book. Now, six years to a day, in my library at San Diego, with its seaward gable commanding a view of a populous town and a wide landscape of bay, ocean, mountains, islands, and the bold promontory of Point Loma, I finish my revision of a new and enlarged edition which brings the story of Arid America down to date.

There is a curious coincidence between the changed scene and conditions of my work at these two periods and the change in the fortunes of the Cause with which I deal. The irrigation movement of 1899 was compara tively remote from the great heart of the Nation, domi ciled in distant deserts, a long way from the nearest house (and almost nobody lived there, too), while the irrigation movement of 1905 is planted in the heart of populous towns and intimately related to the com merce of the world.

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