IRRIGATION (Lat. in, and rigare, to water or wet), the artificial application of water to land in order to promote vegetation; it is therefore the converse of “drainage” (q.v.), which is the artificial withdrawal of water from lands that are over-saturated. In both cases the object is to promote vegetation.
I. General.—Where there is abundance of rainfall, and when it falls at the required season, there is in general no need for irrigation. But it often happens that, although there is sufficient rainfall to raise an inferior crop, there is not enough to raise a more valuable one.
Irrigation is an art that has been practised from very early times. Year after year fresh discoveries are made that carry back our knowledge of the early history of Egypt. It is certain that, until the cultivator availed himself of the natural overflow of the Nile to saturate the soil, Egypt must have been a desert, and it is a very small step from that to baling up the water from the river and pouring it over lands which the natural flood has not touched. The sculptures and paintings of ancient Egypt bear no trace of anything approaching scientific irrigation, but they often show the peasant baling up the water at least as early as 2000 B.C. By means of this simple plan of raising water and pouring it over the fields thousands of acres are watered every year in India, and the system has many advantages in the eyes of the peasant. Though there is great waste of labour, he can apply his labour when he likes; no permission is required from a government official; no one has to be bribed. The simplest and earliest form of water-raising machinery is the pole with a bucket suspended from one end of a crossbeam and a counterpoise at the other. In India this is known as the denkli or paecottah; in Egypt it is called the shadúf. All along the Nile banks from morning to night may be seen brown-skinned peasants working these shadúfs, tier above tier, so as to raise the water 15 or 16 ft. on to their lands. With a shadúf it is only possible to keep about 4 acres watered, so that a great number of hands are required to irrigate a large surface. Another method largely used is the shallow basket or bucket suspended to strings between two men, who thus bail up the water. A step higher than these is the rude water-wheel, with earthen pots on an endless chain running round it, worked by one or two bullocks. This is used everywhere in Egypt, where it is known as the sakya. In Northern India it is termed the harat, or Persian wheel. With one such water-wheel a pair of oxen can raise water any height up to 18 ft., and keep from 5 to 12 acres irrigated throughout an Egyptian summer. A very familiar means in India of raising water from wells in places where the spring level is as much sometimes as 100 ft. below the surface of the field is the churras, or large leather bag, suspended to a rope passing over a pulley, and raised by a pair of bullocks which go up and down a slope as long as the depth of the well. All these primitive contrivances are still in full use throughout India.
It is not improbable that Assyria and Babylon, with their splendid rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, may have taken the idea from the Nile, and that Carthage and Phoenicia as well as Greece and Italy may have followed the same example. In spite of a certain amount of investigation, the early history of irrigation in Persia and China remains imperfectly known. In Spain irrigation may be traced directly to the Moorish occupation, and almost everywhere throughout Asia and Africa where the Moslem penetrated is to be found some knowledge of irrigation.
Reservoirs are familiar everywhere for the water-supply of towns, but as the volume necessary, even for a large town, does not go far in irrigating land, many sites which would do admirably for the former would not contain water Spain. sufficient to be worth applying to the latter purpose. In the Mediterranean provinces of Spain there are some very remarkable irrigation dams. The great masonry dam of Alicante on the river Monegre, which dates from 1579, is situated in a narrow gorge, so that while 140 ft. high, it is only 190 ft. long at the crest. The reservoir is said to contain 130 million cub. ft. of water, and to serve for the irrigation of 9000 acres, but unless it refills several times a year, it is hardly possible that so much land can be watered in any one season. The Elche reservoir, in the same province, has a similar dam 55 ft. high. In neither case is there a waste-weir, the surplus water being allowed to pour over the crest of the dam. South of Elche is the province of Murcia, watered by the river Segura, on which there is a dam 25 ft. high, said to be 800 years old, and to serve for the irrigation of 25,000 acres. The Lorca dam in the same neighbourhood irrigates 27,000 acres. In the jungles of Ceylon are to be found remains of gigantic irrigation dams, and on the neighbouring India. mainland of Southern India, throughout the provinces of Madras and Mysore, the country is covered with irrigation reservoirs, or, as they are locally termed, tanks. These vary from village ponds to lakes 14 or 15 m. long. Most of them are of old native construction, but they have been greatly improved and enlarged within the last half century. The casual traveller in southern India constantly remarks the ruins of old dams, and the impression is conveyed that at one time, before British rule prevailed, the irrigation of the country was much more perfect than it is now. That idea, however, is mistaken. An irrigation reservoir, like a human being, has a certain life. Quicker or slower, the water that fills it will wash in sand and mud, and year by year this process will go on till ultimately the whole reservoir is filled up. The embankment is raised, and raised again, but at last it is better to abandon it and make a new tank elsewhere, for it would never pay to dig out the silt by manual labour. It may safely be said that at no time in history were there more tanks in operation than at present. The ruins which are seen are the ruins of long centuries of tanks that once flourished and became silted up. But they did not all flourish at once.
In the countries now being considered, the test of an irrigation work is how it serves in a season of drought and famine. It is evident that if there is a long cessation of rain, there can be none to fill the reservoirs. In September 1877 there were very few in all southern India that were not dry. But even so, they helped to shorten the famine period; they stored up the rain after it had ceased to fall, and they caught up and husbanded the first drops when it began again.
Irrigation effected by river-fed canals naturally depends on the regimen of the rivers. Some rivers vary much in their discharge at different seasons. In some cases this variation is comparatively little. Sometimes the flood Irrigation canals. season recurs regularly at the same time of the year; sometimes it is uncertain. In some rivers the water is generally pure; in others it is highly charged with fertilizing alluvium, or, it may be, with barren silt. In countries nearly rainless, such as Egypt or Sind, there can be no cultivation without irrigation. Elsewhere the rainfall may be sufficient for ordinary crops, but not for the more valuable kinds. In ordinary years in southern India the maize and the millet, which form so large a portion of the peasants' food, can be raised without irrigation, but it is required for the more valuable rice or sugar-cane. Elsewhere in India the rainfall is usually sufficient for all the cultivation of the district, but about every eleven years comes a season of drought, during which canal water is so precious as to make it worth while to construct costly canals merely to serve as a protection against famine. When a river partakes of the nature of a torrent, dwindling to a paltry stream at one season and swelling into an enormous flood at another, it is impossible to construct a system of irrigation canals without very costly engineering works, sluices, dams, waste-weirs, &c., so as to give the engineer entire control of the water. Such may be seen on the canals of Cuttack, derived from the Mahanadi, a river of which the discharge does not exceed 400 cub. ft. per second in the dry season, and rises to 1,600,000 cub. ft. per second in the rainy season.
Very differently situated are the great canals of Lombardy, drawn from the Ticino and Adda rivers, flowing from the Maggiore and Como lakes. The severest drought never exhausts these reservoirs, and the heaviest rain can never convert these rivers into the resistless floods which they would be but for the moderating influence of the great lakes. The Ticino and Adda do not rise in floods more than 6 or 7 ft. above their ordinary level
