| OCR Text |
Show offering a prospective lessee, for a consideration, forty aere3 Or more of raw land, and practically nothing else. Does the Indian Office consider what raw land means in this country? It is land that is lying precisely as it was left by the Creator.. It is covered with sagebrush, or worseyet, greasewood; possibly impregnated with alkali; possibly thickly spotted with rofLky points; not a vestige of a fence or a house or a stable; not enough grass growing thereon to support a single steer; no well; no spring; no stream. Somewhere between the upper side of the tract and the top of the hill that lies behind it is an irrigating ditch; and there is no actual guarantee, although one is implied, that there will be any water in this ditch when it is desired for use. (Frequently leases are canceled because of inability to get water.) There is'timber upon the mountain ten? twenty or thirty miles away. ',"/e expect a man to take his wife' and baby out upon this tract of land and pay for the nriv-ilege. One might as well expeot a man. to pay for t?ie privilege-working on a"chain gang. A man can go out_into the settled com-munities and have improved farms tendered him with the privilege |
