Excerpt from The Irrigation Age, Vol. 20: November, 1904 Land in the Yakima Valley is covered with sage brush and is usually rough. If greasewood is found mingled with the sagebrush to any considerable extent the land is regarded with suspicion, since this brush is looked upon as an index of the presence of injurious alkali in the soil. The roots of sagebrush are all near the surface and the earth about them is loose, so that the removal of the brush is not difficult nor expensive. It is grubbed with a sharp mattock which cuts the roots below the surface of the ground. The usual cost of clearing the land by hand work, including burning of the brush, is $3 an acre, though during the winter, when labor is plentiful, it is sometimes done for $2 an acre. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.