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Irrigate   /ˈɪrəgˌeɪt/   Listen
Irrigate

verb
(past & past part. irrigated; pres. part. irrigating)
1.
Supply with water, as with channels or ditches or streams.  Synonym: water.
2.
Supply with a constant flow or sprinkling of some liquid, for the purpose of cooling, cleansing, or disinfecting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Irrigate" Quotes from Famous Books



... covers the dishes and the beds and the books and the chairs and the floors and does the work of blotting paper while you're writing letters to the Agricultural Department in Washington asking them to irrigate the Little Colorado so we can raise garden truck in the channel between the rainy seasons. At the dinner table the custard pie looks as if it was dusted with pulverised sugar and you eat so much sand that ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... February. The trees were budding earlier than usual; the nightingale had never come so soon; the spring rose fairer in the land than the oldest men could recollect it. In every quarter, little brooks gushed out to irrigate the pastures and meadows; the hills seemed heaving, the vines rose higher and higher, the fruit-trees blossomed as they had never done; and a swelling fragrant blessedness hung suspended heavily in rosy clouds over the scene. All prospered beyond expectation: no rude day, no tempest ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the fertile Indian Garden, Angel Plateau is reached. The spring at Indian Garden is large enough to irrigate a small tract of ground. Experience has demonstrated that not only can vegetables of every kind be grown here, but all kinds of fruits, even oranges, lemons and grapefruit. For two miles after leaving the Garden, we ride over a fairly level plateau to its ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... his hand and the marshal went on: "To tell the honest truth, I thought you were one of Lightfoot's gang. I couldn't place you. Of course I see now—I have your picture at the office—the drinks are on me." He turned with a smile to the crowd: "Come, boys—irrigate and get done with it. It's a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... highest beneficial use. New Mexico, Texas, and Old Mexico all claim their right to the water for all kinds of purposes. If we recognize Colorado's full claim there is probably enough water in Colorado to irrigate all of her soil, but portions of Wyoming, Nebraska, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah would ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... hedge of fish-geraniums over ten feet high, covered with scarlet flowers. It seemed altogether more like a fairy bower than a human habitation. The windmills all over California, for pumping water, make a very pretty feature in the landscape, as well as an important one, as people are obliged to irrigate their gardens during the dry season. In August the hills are as brown ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Bera, and passed some way along the banks of another river. Even in the end of March, these rivers are full of water, and contain no large banks of sand, as is usual in India. With industry, they might be applied most advantageously to irrigate the fields. The water is dirty, and owing to the quantity of rotten vegetable matter which it brings from the forest, and which at this season is little diluted, it is reckoned very unwholesome. Gar Pasara is a small village with a large tank. Near it is a brick house ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... figurin' to run a railroad through the basin. A year or so ago there was secret talk of it in the capital. It leaked out that the railroad guys was intendin' to run their road through the basin. They was goin' to build a town right where the Rancho Seco lays; an' they was plannin' to irrigate a lot of the land around there. The governor says it was to be big—an' likely it'll be big, when ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... tribes in Africa and in America worship the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes are known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her depend the tides; and she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that recurrently irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than any other companion of earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages knew her by that name. Her metrical phases are the symbol of the order of recurrence. Constancy in approach ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... neighborhood easy to study, states that a six-inch well can be put down for less than $2,300, and that any of the principal wells at Aberdeen, Hitchcock, Redfield, Woonsocket, Huron, or Yankton will irrigate six hundred and forty acres, which would bring the cost to less than $4.00 per acre for twelve inches of depth during the growing season. Mr. Hinds, of the Hinds ranch, has been charging adjacent farmers, however, only $1.00 per acre for water ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... the Turai beyond, where the land becomes water-logged, and the main product is long, rank grass, growing to the height of ten or twelve feet. By a system of canals, devised and carried out by Sir Henry Ramsay, the water as it comes down from the hills is made to irrigate a large part of the Bhabhur, rendering it fit for agricultural purposes. The result is that the people now cultivate the land, beside grazing their cattle over it. They sow toward the end of the rainy season, and reap at the beginning of the hot weather, when they retreat to the hills, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... melancholy beginning, incipient drink, imbibe light, illuminate hall, corridor stair, escalator anger, indignation fight, combat sleight-of-hand, prestidigitation build, construct tree, arbor ask, interrogate wench, virgin frisk, caper fill, replenish water, irrigate silly, foolish coming, advent feeling, sentiment old, antiquated forerunner, precursor sew, embroider unload, exonerate grave, sepulcher readable, legible tell, narrate kiss, osculate nose, proboscis striking, percussion green, verdant stroke, concussion ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... can bear hardships better than young women, buoyed up by friends, 688; not cast down though voted down, sympathy from J. Hooker, C. Barton sends love, A. Shaw feels her inspiration, A. sleeps in sod houses, 689; Cong. shd. appropriate money to irrigate, instead of sending com., twenty miles between meet., stampeded by cyclones, Russian sheriff wants to help her, rides in old stage, 690; "humanity at low ebb," gets into poor hotel, "laughs like other people," ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... a few peon families. The oasis lay in an arroyo a mile wide, and sloped southwest for some ten miles or more. The river went dry most of the year; but enough water was stored in flood season to irrigate the gardens ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... Texas he expressed himself as so encouraged by the last business statement, which showed a decided turn for the better, that he was willing to add a thousand dollars to the capital and irrigate some more of the unimproved land ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... some way above Babylon about Accad, the level of the river bed Euphrates is so much higher than the valley of the Tigris eastward, that numerous streams flow off from it, which would serve admirably to irrigate a garden situated between the two, eastward ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... not resist lending their aid also. What stimulated the haste of Clearchus was the suspicion in his mind that these trenches were not, as a rule, so full of water, since it was not the season to irrigate the plain; and he fancied that the king had let the water on for the express purpose of vividly presenting to the Hellenes the many dangers with which their march was ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... transforming themselves automatically into gold for their happy owners; another turn shows the lazy rivers arising from their age-long beds and mossy couches to climb the hot hillsides and to toil and sweat at the command of the lord of this world, as they irrigate his arid acres. Yet another turn and the wrathful river is carrying on its breast the tens of thousands of winter-cut logs dancing like straws on its frothy surface on their way to the busy mills; and the turbulent streams, their ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... to refresh. refugiar vr. to shelter oneself, to take refuge. refulgencia f. refulgence, splendor. regalado pleasant. regalar to regale, please, present. regalo gift. regar to water, irrigate. regidor magistrate, alderman. regimiento regiment. registrar to examine. regla rule; en —— in due form. regocijar to rejoice, cause joy. regocijo joy, pleasure. regresar to return. regular regular, natural, ordinary. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... been argued that no intelligent beings would construct canals if the planet were generally flat, as it would only be necessary to let the water flow over the surface as far as it would go, and thus irrigate the parts reached by the water; whilst if it were not flat, the canals could not be constructed ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... stone walls from the surrounding blackness; it seemed a wonder of fertility; hard by was the owner, a white man, waiting the turn of the tide by the margin of his well; so soon as the sea flowed, he might begin to irrigate with brackish water. The children hailed my companion from wayside houses. With one little maid, knotting her gown about her in embarrassment so as to define her little person like a suit of tights, we held a conversation more prolonged. "Will you be at school to-morrow?" "Yes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ago at Arpinum for 100,000 sesterces (about 8oo pounds). I never saw a shadier spot in summer—water springs in many parts of it, and abundant into the bargain. In short, Caesius thought that you would easily irrigate fifty iugera of the meadow land. For my part, I can assure you of this, which is more in my line, that you will have a villa marvellously pleasant, with the addition of a fish-pond, spouting fountains, a pakestra, and a shrubbery. I am told that you wish to keep this Bovillae ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... enough. Given water (the rain I guess would not wet your pocket-handkerchief through six times in a twelvemonth), the soil will grow most things, but then you see there is no water, and as for the artesian wells, when successful, they can each only irrigate a small area; but here ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... destitute condition under the government of Old Mexico. Some of the inhabitants might be said to be rich, though but few of this class own ten thousand dollars' worth of property. It is with great labor that the people of Taos bring their crops to perfection, as it is necessary to irrigate the soil, unless the season, which is rarely the fact, is favorable in furnishing rains to them. There are no fences to divide one man's possessions from another's; but, by common law, they furnish shepherds to guard their flocks and cattle and keep them from trespassing. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... fall would make the river valuable for irrigation if there were tillable land to irrigate; but on the west the river is hugged closely by a mountain chain whose crest, rising over 6,000 feet above the sea, is sometimes less than 2 miles from the river, and whose steep and rugged sides descend in an almost unbroken slope to the river bottom. The eastern ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... we have got to settle in this country. I have been over the walnut orchards on the Pacific coast, in the East and in Europe, and I find three entirely separate and distinct methods of treatment. On the Pacific coast, the rule is to cultivate every year and irrigate where they can, but to cultivate, at any rate, whether they irrigate or not. In the East, where people are supposed to be very industrious, we have adopted the lazier way of letting the trees grow in sod; but that is not so bad if we follow the principle brought forward ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... as she began to pick up the knives and forks and plates. She had not told him that when Chang Lee's wages for June were paid it would leave them less than twenty dollars to get through the summer on. "I've been learning to irrigate the cotton rows and I can help," she said. "It will be a lot ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... valley itself, it was comparatively nothing but a slit in the mass of mountains. A river ran through it, and the water was used by the Indians to irrigate the surrounding land. Their live stock consisted chiefly of oxen and horses, and the principal vegetables cultivated were maize and coca. You may not know that this coca is a plant something like the vine, and it grows to a height of six or eight feet. The leaves are very ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... 1875 and 1878 settlers began to come again and a thriving community now is in existence at that point, known as Littlefield. It is to benefit in large degree by plans approved by the Arizona Water Commissioner, for damming of the canyon for storage of water to irrigate land of the Virgin Valley toward the southwest. Littlefield is the extreme northwestern settlement of the present Arizona five miles south of the Utah line and three miles east of the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... English novelists of the eighteenth century turned the course of English Literature out of its older channel. Her streams had descended from the double peaks of Parnassus to irrigate the enamelled fields and elegant parterres of poetry and the drama, as the critics of the period might have said. But Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, diverted the waters, from poetry and plays, into the region of the novel, whither they have ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... and by nature, so he said nothing about it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, instinctively began preparing for the winter of his life. Where he had lately been washing tentatively the sand along Snake River, he built a ranch. His prospector's tools he used in digging ditches to irrigate his new-made meadows, and his mining days he lived over again only in halting recital to his sons when they clamored for details of the old days when Indians were not mere untidy neighbors to be gossiped with and fed, but enemies to be ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... over vast areas is 24 inches, and could be made much greater by cultivation. Four-fifths of this water now runs to waste. Again surface-parched Australia has vast areas of underground water which only require to be tapped and brought to the surface, to irrigate and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... the priests and Indians of their charge, there are to be found at San Juan many ruins of the aqueducts, or flumes, some of brick, others of wood, supported across ravines, which conveyed the water needed to irrigate the eighty acres of orchard, vineyard, and garden that used to be surrounded by an adobe wall. Reservoirs, cisterns, and zanjas of brick, stone, and cement are seen here and there, and several remnants of the masonry aqueducts are still found in ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... which may be explained in this way:—Finer bodies retain coarser, but not the coarser the finer, and the belly is capable of retaining food, but not fire and air. God therefore formed a network of fire and air to irrigate the veins, having within it two lesser nets, and stretched cords reaching from both the lesser nets to the extremity of the outer net. The inner parts of the net were made by him of fire, the lesser nets and their cavities ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... either side, with the long chain of Arabian mountains that adjoin it on the east, and with the low hills of the Lybian desert on the west. By dikes, canals, and reservoirs, the beneficent river from the most ancient times has been made to irrigate the land above, where are the towns and dwellings of the people, and thus to extend and keep up its unrivaled fertility. The country of old was divided into two parts,—Upper Egypt, as it is now called, with Thebes for its principal city, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... and legitimate when they are lower, are largely hustling the higher ones into the background, and that the river has got so many ponds to fill, and so many canals to trickle through, and so many plantations to irrigate and make verdant, that there is a danger of its falling low at its fountain, and running shallow in its course. One sometimes would like to see more things done for Him that the world would call 'utter folly,' and 'prodigal waste,' and 'absolutely useless.' Jesus Christ has a great many strange ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... no rain falls to lay the dust or irrigate the earth, the streams, which, during the winter, are like mountain torrents, and sweep every thing opposed to them towards the ocean, become puny little rivulets, and as the summer advances, disappear altogether from sight, and nothing but deep gulches mark ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... occupied themselves with the founding of new settlements to receive the surplus population from the centres already in activity. It is for this reason that the church has been so urgent in seeking and demanding new territory to irrigate and cultivate, in Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Idaho, and even as far afield as Canada. The transplanting of a swarm from the parent hive is undertaken with the greatest care. Let us take for example the colonisation ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... by the passage of our army. [The army of Ibbas, on its march in 408 to fight Clovis, after the fall of the Visigothic Monarchy.] True, that army went forth with shouts of concord to liberate Gaul. But so a river bursting forth may irrigate and fertilise a whole country, and yet destroy the increase of that particular channel in which ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... his idea of eventually tapping the mountain lake near which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the precious fluid. The promoter had an engineer's estimate of the cost ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Still it remains true that the Salvation Army is unique, if only on account of the colossal scale of its operations. Its fertilizing stream flows on steadily from land to land, till it bids fair to irrigate the whole earth. What I have written about is but one little segment of a work which flourishes everywhere, and even lifts its head in Roman Catholic countries, although in these, as yet, it makes ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... had seen among the Igorrotes or head-hunters of the island of Luzon, in the Philippine Archipelago, that same method of irrigation, by collecting the water from a high point on the mountain side in order to irrigate consecutively the series of terraces. Not only was I struck by the fact of finding so unusual a method of cultivation at two points of the globe so far apart, but I was even more impressed by the wonderful resemblance in type between the local natives and the inhabitants of the northern island of ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... boundary, fifty-nine rivers, great and small, pass through the line of coast. Proceeding from the avalanches of the Andes or the small alpine lakes, they force their way through narrow mountain-valleys, irrigate the waste grounds, and then, after brief courses, flow into ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... be as comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We like you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will appeal to you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of it is desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides—now I am sure this will appeal to you and to all right-minded men—we ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... signs that the planet of war has long since passed its prime. There are lands and seas in Mars, the vapor of water is present in his air, clouds form, rains and snows fall upon his surface, and doubtless brooks and rivers irrigate his soil, and carry down the moisture collected on his wide continents to the seas whence the clouds had originally been formed. But I do not think there is much vegetation on Mars, or that many living creatures of the higher types ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... dry," nodded the doctor wisely. "Some day they will irrigate all this. Then the animals ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... extreme north-west the Dusuns seem to be of Murut stock with an infusion of Chinese blood and culture. They use a plough drawn by buffalo in the PADI fields, which they irrigate systematically. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... him, little thinking that my next visit was to be the last. My own heart was full of that joy whose overflow Margaret had entrusted to its care—which is a great gift to a minister, this gift of gladness, seeking as he does to irrigate the thirsty ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... watering the gardens, which the unfavorable dryness of the season rendered necessary. The occasional dryness of some seasons, I understood to be the only complaint of the settlers in this fertile valley, as it sometimes renders the crops uncertain. Mr. Sutter was about making arrangements to irrigate his lands by means of the Rio de los Americanos. He had this year sown, and altogether by Indian labor, three hundred fanegas ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... "Big enough to irrigate about twenty-five acres of desert for alfalfa. I'm convinced that when you actually undertake to put such a plant in operation, you'll realize that there are details to be remade that you never dreamed ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... only investigate this matter of Irrigation as thoroughly as its importance deserves, they would find that they have neglected mines of wealth all around them more extensive and far more reliable than those of California. One man alone may not always be able to irrigate his farm except at too great a cost; but let the subject be commended to general attention, and the expense would be vastly diminished. Ten thousand farms together, embracing a whole valley, may often be irrigated for less than the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... you can see its rocky rim. All it needs is this short flume sketched in here to bring the water down, and a sluice-gate to feed the main canal that follows this bench we are on. Spillways would irrigate a peach orchard along this slope below us and seep out through this level around us to supply home gardens and lawn. Just imagine it!" He paused, while her glance followed his brief comparisons, moving from the plan to the surface of the bench and down over the slope ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... a level surface—or on a surface slightly inclined from the poles towards the equator, which would be advantageous in either case—the melting water would of itself spread over the ground and naturally irrigate as much of the surface as it was possible for it to reach. If the surface were not level, but consisted of slight elevations and expressions to the extent of a few scores or a few hundreds of feet, then there would be no possible ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... have nothing to pay, and betake ourselves to Him who alone can deliver us from the habit and power of these small accumulated faults, and who alone can lift the burden of guilt and responsibility from off our shoulders? If you irrigate the sand it becomes fruitful soil. Christ brings to us the river of the water of life; the inspiring, the quickening, the fructifying power of the new life that He bestows, and the sand may become soil, and the wilderness blossom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... complex and difficult problem the growers of grapes in semi-arid regions have to solve. As long, however, as the grape-grower can grow fairly vigorous vines and harvest a fairly bountiful crop by natural rainfall, he should not irrigate; for, even though the crop offsets the cost, there are several objections to growing grapes under irrigation. The vines are subject to more diseases and physiological troubles; the fruit is said to lack ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... gardens and at their ease, in order to study their habits and condition. He took great interest in the laborers. On one occasion he got down from his diligence to ask a man, who was drawing water from a well to irrigate the land, how much he was paid for this slow and cumbersome process. He was astonished to hear that it was but twelve cents ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... like the Lowa are incalculable in these countries, where we always find that cultivation follows the direction of the winter torrents, as it follows the Nile in Egypt. There are not many Wadys in this country which inundate the land; but the inhabitants make the best use of the water to irrigate their fields after the great rains have ceased. Springs are scarce, and it is from the Wadys that the reservoirs are filled which supply both men and cattle with water, till the return of the rainy season. It is from the numerous Wadys which rise in the Djebel Haouran that the population of the Haouran ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... They knew how to irrigate a long time before we understood its advantages. Their canals conveyed large volumes of water from springs to the Indian Gardens beyond here. Yonder is what is known as the Battleship Iowa," said the guide, pointing to the left to a majestic pile of red sandstone that ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... verdure, most of them sinking and vanishing before they reach the base of their fountain ranges. Perhaps not one in ten of the whole number flow out into the open plains, not a single drop reaches the sea, and only a few are large enough to irrigate more than ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... without price. The visible pages of learning, wisdom, science, truth, imagination, ingenious theory, or deep conviction lie open not only to the eyes, but to the hearts and homes of a great people. It is like the overflowing Nile, carrying sweet waters to irrigate many waste places, and clothing the dry dust of common life with the flowers, the fruit, and the sustaining grain, springing from invisible seeds cast by unseen hands into the wide ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... incarnation of the spirit of, or life principle in, the Euphrates River. His centre of worship was at Eridu, an ancient seaport, where apparently the prehistoric Babylonians (the Sumerians) first began to utilize the dried-up beds of shifting streams to irrigate the soil. One of the several creation myths is reminiscent of those early experiences ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... provided with abundant fisheries, of all kinds. They are densely inhabited by natives. Above Manila there is a province of more than twenty leguas in extent called La Pampanga. This province possesses many rivers and creeks that irrigate it. They all flow and empty into the bay. This province contains many settlements of natives, and considerable quantities of rice, fruits, fish, meat, and ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... of more than ordinary spaciousness which contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone strongly cemented, and brimming with limpid water. From this cistern large earthen pipes led off in various directions to irrigate ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... the Romans, the Spanish, and the army of Louis XIV., and then defend the inland towns with their fleets. Water was their poverty; they have made it riches. The whole country is covered with a network of canals, which irrigate the land and are at the same time the highways of the people. The towns communicate with the sea by means of the canals; canals lead from town to town, binding the towns to the villages, and uniting the villages themselves, as they lie with their homesteads ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... his Majesty must have had a disturbed night after partaking thereof, as they are highly stimulating to the kidneys: indeed, there is strong reason for supposing that these roots have a prior claim to those of the dandelion for lectimingous fame, (lectus, "the bed"; mingo, to "irrigate"). ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... or reservoir for surface water as big as a lake, and bore for artesian water—and get it, too, if I had to bore right through to England; and I'd irrigate the ground and make it grow horse-feed and fruit, and vegetables too, if I had to cart manure from Bourke. And every teamster's bullock or horse, and every shearer's hack, could burst itself free, but I'd make travelling stock pay—for ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... red ironstone; the mission-house on a little rocky eminence over the river Kolobeng." Livingstone had pointed out to the chief that the only feasible way of watering the gardens was to select some good never-failing river, make a canal, and irrigate the adjacent lands. The wonderful influence which he had acquired was apparent from the fact that the very morning after he told them of his intention to move to the Kolobeng, the whole tribe was in motion for the "flitting." ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... controlled by individual farmers or by a few neighbors, while another one third is supplied by stock companies. As early as 1877 Congress passed "a desert land law," by which homesteads were granted in the arid lands on condition that the settlers should irrigate the land. In 1894 the Carey Act was passed by Congress under which the national government may give to a state as much as a million acres of arid public land within its borders, on condition that the state provides for its irrigation. The work is done by private ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... country, and the dry Western districts, where there is no water available for irrigation, they can be grown from one end of the State to the other, provided that they are planted in suitable soil, and that, in the drier parts, there is an available supply of suitable water with which to irrigate them during the prevalence of long dry spells. The country adjoining the eastern seaboard, extending from the Tweed River in the South to Cooktown in the North—a distance of about 1,100 miles, and extending inland for nearly 100 miles—is naturally suited to the growth of citrus fruits, and there ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... the monastery, informing herself most minutely of its internal position, and reflecting on the means of introducing herself to the cell of her beloved Carthusian. The stream of water which served to irrigate the gardens of the monastery, entered a wall by a large semicircular arch or opening near the garden itself. The lady, prodigal in the expenditure of money, and in the employment of faithful and trustworthy agents, procured a raft to be constructed, by means of ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... of humanity had a vaulting ambition. He desired to slake the thirst of every man in Christendom; but this being impossible from the very nature of things, he determined to settle in some arid spot like Minerva Court, and irrigate it so sweetly and copiously that all men's noses would blossom as the roses. To supply his brothers' wants, and create new ones at the same time, was his purpose in establishing this Oasis in the Desert of Minerva Court; and it might as well ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Africa the proudest ebony beauties are to be seen upon the backs of cattle. In all ages they have drawn the plough. In Spain they still trample out the corn; in India they raise the water from the deepest wells to irrigate the thirsty soil of Bengal. When Caesar invaded Britain they constituted the chief riches of its inhabitants; and they still form no inconsiderable item in the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... view if they think anything to be impossible. They are easily recognized. They belong to the worst class of promoters and inventors or their relations. If a man is studying how to pay the national debt or to solve the social question or to irrigate Sahara, or is inclined to discover a dirigible airship, a perpetual-motion machine, or a panacea, or if he shows sympathy for people so inclined, he is likely to consider everything possible—and men ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... to prevent him. The forest was free to all, provided that they rendered due service to the Prince. Might not a house or castle built there become the beginning of a city? The Baron listened, and then said he must go and see that a new hatch was put in the brook to irrigate the water-meadow. That ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... government has launched a multimillion-dollar development program in the southeastern region, which includes the building of a dozen dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to generate electric power and irrigate large tracts of farmland. The planned tapping of huge additional quantities of Euphrates water has raised serious concern in the downstream riparian nations of Syria ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... face of it gray, crumbling shale, rising three hundred feet in abrupt slope from the water's edge. At great labor and expense Philbrook built a road between Glendora and this place, and carried water in pipes from the river to irrigate the grass, trees, shrubs and blooming plants alien to that country which he planted to break the bleakness of it and make a setting for his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... pazienza!" and crept sullenly out of sight, as our pensive train resumed its meditative progress. No doubt this poor landscape was imbued, in its dull, earthy way, with a feeling that the coming of Garibaldi would irrigate and fertilize it into a paradise; as at Venice the gondoliers believed that his army would bring in its train cheap wine and hordes of rich and helpless Englishmen bent on perpetual tours of the Grand Canal without understanding as ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... of moisture and the consequent exhaustion have a serious effect on plums, and should never be allowed. Mulch newly-planted trees in light or poor soil; give liquid manure or irrigate in dry weather. Should the crops be heavy, and the soil at all deficient in lime, the deficiency should be made up by scattering lime some distance around the stems and working it gently in. "An annual dressing of decayed vegetable matter, old manure and lime-rubbish, laid ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... strength of his limbs!... His son was all he had,—the fruit of a late marriage,—and he was a sturdy youth, as industrious and taciturn as his father; a soldier of the soil, who required neither orders nor threat to fulfil his duties; ready to awake at midnight when it was his turn to irrigate his land and give the fields drink under the light of the stars; quick to spring from his bed on the hard kitchen bench, throwing off the covers and putting on his hemp sandals at the sound of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Tibet the "roof of the world," and most of it is as barren as the roof of a house. Still the roof, though producing nothing, collects water to irrigate a garden. Tibet is the mother of great rivers, and she feeds them from her eternal snows. On her highlands is a lake or cluster of lakes which the Chinese describe as Sing Su Hai, the "sea of stars." From this the Yellow River ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... therefore, if we get to the case early enough, is to irrigate the wound freely with a solution of carbolic acid in water (1 in 20), or with a solution of perchloride of mercury (1 in 1,000), injected by means of a glass syringe, or the pattern of syringe devised for quittor. This injecting should be done thoroughly, and by ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... and I, our guns resting on the already cooling earth, beside the pool that forms the center of the meager oasis, hidden behind a kind of hedge of alfa. The setting sun was reddening the stagnant ditches which irrigate the poor garden plots ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... November to the beginning of March. This is the rainy season. After it the easterly winds blow for some time. The breaking up of the monsoon is the most unhealthy season of all. There are no navigable rivers, but numerous streams descend from the mountains and irrigate the land. One of the chief productions of this country is pepper. It is produced from a plant of the vine kind, Piper nigrum, which twines its tendrils round poles or trees, like ivy or hops. The pepper-corns grow in bunches ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... From what I have seen that isn't a bad size to produce as 1-0 stock, though it is better in some places. We find, too, in the spring before germination, that in our particular section of the state along the Ohio River valley we sometimes get a dry spring and find it necessary to irrigate that land where we planted the chestnuts, just as the seed beds where we planted pine, in order to keep the ground moist and keep it in a condition where seeds will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... canning peaches in April, and will I gain time in growth and development? I want to set out eight acres in Tuscans or Phillips on deep rich soil near Yuba City. I have a pumping plant and can irrigate. The land has been in alfalfa for several years. I have in mind setting out trees without disturbing the alfalfa - until next plowing season. Do you think it advisable to use commercial fertilizer ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... the road ran up the valley of the Rimac, a small river, but of vital importance to the country through which it passes, as small canals branching from it irrigate the land. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... advantage of the state. In the same manner the development of irrigation is changing the character of farming in many parts of California. In the early days fruit-raising was of the nature of speculation, but the spread of irrigation has brought it into more wholesome relations. To irrigate a tract of land is to make its product certain; but at the same time irrigation demands expenditure of money, and the building of a home necessarily follows. Irrigation thus tends to break up the vast farms into small holdings ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... see it every year, as the overflow does not reach certain points annually. Besides, seasons of scant water occur, and then a part of Egypt fails to receive the enriching deposit. Finally, because of heat the earth dries up quickly, and then man has to irrigate out of vessels. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... Egypt irrigate in the same way as the ryots of India. They lay off a field into small rectangular patches, with a ridge around each to keep the irrigation water in it. These rectangles make the fields look like huge checker-boards. Plowing is done exactly as in the time of Cleopatra. A forked ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch



Words linked to "Irrigate" :   hose, water, hose down, hush, wet, irrigation, care for, treat, flush



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