Explore "The Caves of Shend" by David Hennessey on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Beneath a statue of a late Earl of Shrewsbury, placed in the midst of one of the largest and loveliest gardens of England, there is inscribed the legend 'He made the desert smile.' The Earl brought water by a conduit for twenty miles to a romantic portion of his estate, and with that water he turned the desert into a world-famous garden.
Such is the change that is being wrought by irrigation in Australia. There is no country in the world so extensively supplied with Artesian and sub-Artesian water, and at the time of our story it was foreseen by practical men that the exploitation of this wonderful gift of Nature would very soon open up vast areas in the interior, which had before been regarded as useless desert.