OCR Text |
Show but provides that they shall be appraised by direction of the Secretary of the Interior, and shall be conveyed only after the appraised value has been paid. It is a sale of the lands in good faith and for a valuable consideration-all they are worth-and differs in no respect from the disposition of much of the public land. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, in his last annual report (1877), p. 34, says: "Recurring again to the desert-land bill, I would recommend its early repeal, and in lieu of it the enactment of a law giving to persons or corporations all the lands which are truly and unmistakably desert in character which they may thoroughly and fully reclaim by means of irrigation, either from rivers, lakes, or artesian wells. If lands which require no irrigation are given away to any persons who will settle upon and improve them, why not give away desert lands upon the same condition, especially when it requires so much money to improve them?" Your committee see no reason why this "Desert of Death," not only useless, but formidable to progress in that latitude, should be withheld from sale to one who thinks, how vainly soever it may be, that it can be made to blossom as the rose, when the Commissioner of the General Land Office recommends the absolute donation of all such land, conditioned only on irrigation. If it be a blessing to mankind to make a palm grow in the midst of the desert, how much greater blessing is it to clothe that desert with fountains of water and fruits and flowers. Sir S. W. Baker, in his exploration of the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia, demonstrates the truth that the beneficial results of irrigation are only equaled by the bounty of God in regular rainfall. "The remains of the beautiful system of artificial irrigation by the ancients in Ceylon attest the degree of civilization to which they had attained. |