[THE END.]
CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.
By MARGARET INNES.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RESERVOIR—CHINESE MEDICINES—DUST—ADVANTAGES OF THE LIFE—THE RAINS—FLOODS.
hat summer, our first on the ranch, we made a large reservoir to hold 200,000 gallons. There was a convenient gulch or dip, which drained a fair stretch of hill slope, and which lent itself well for the purpose. We meant also to run our share of the flume water into this reservoir whenever it was not being used on the ranch.
Many waggon loads of sand from the Silvero Valley had to be hauled up by the little grey team, and endless barrels of cement from the station at El Barco five miles away. It was a long tiresome job. There was plenty of rock, with which to build the dam, lying about on the hills, but to lift these pieces on to the sledge, improvised for this purpose, and bring them over hill and dale to the reservoir site and there unload them, was both very hard work and at times a little dangerous, for the rocks were often so large that they were not easily controlled, and were always threatening to roll over on to the feet or hands of the “master builder” and his men.
There were some bad bruises before all the names of the workers were written on the cement top of the wall as an artistic finish to the dam.