Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/454

 434 framing in its arches delicious views of distant blue mountains, their tops now powdered with snow.

This land of running brooks should be a famous place for the children to sail their boats, though as a matter of fact we do not see them doing it. Perhaps there is a law against it. There are laws, at any rate, against stealing the water, wantonly raising the gates to waste it, or transferring it to irrigators outside the city limits. These latter are entitled to it only upon an extra payment and after those within the city have been supplied.

As all irrigators cannot be supplied at once, the manner of serving it out is as follows: Applications have to be made in the last week of each month. The Zanjero then apportions the supply so that it may go round among the applicants in the most convenient way. The complete circuit takes about twenty days. The applicant receives a ticket, on the payment of a fee, entitling him to receive the water on such a day at such an hour. The right for that time is exclusively his. The rates are so fixed as to reimburse the public treasury, and are not intended as a source of profit. The average charge for water is about fifty cents an hour, two dollars a day, and a dollar and twenty-five cents a night.

The subscriber has the water delivered to him by the deputy at his connecting-gate. At all other times the gate must be kept fastened with a padlock. The wooden gate, sliding smoothly in its grooves, is like a little guillotine.

Chop! goes the guillotine, when it has been raised long enough, and off goes the head, as it were, of the little stream. Thus surprised on its way among the orchards and gardens, it writhes and twists a while, rises again in its confining box, and is soon ready to begin life again on a new basis.