The picturesque West. Our western empire beyond the Mississippi. Containing ... description, from ... authentic sources, of the geography, geology, and natural history, the climate, soil, agriculture, and the mineral products, the crops, and herds and flocks, the social condition, and future prospects of the whole region lying between the Mississippi and the Pacific ocean

Front matter

OF THE

U N I VERS ITY or ILLINOIS

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Chapter I

What it Comprehends — The West beyond the Mississippi — Its Area and Extent — Comparison with other Empires — Climate — Mountains — Natural Phenomena — Soil — The Alkaline, Volcanic and Bad Lands ” — Predominance of Arable and Pasture Lands — Nutritious Grasses in THE Grazing Lands.

“ Our Western Empire” is of greater extent than any other Empire of Christendom except Russia and Brazil, and in population, enterprise, and advantages for future growth is the peer of any; but it has no monarch, hereditary or elective, to rule its wide domain. It forms a large part — more than two-thirds of the Great Republic of the United States of America, and over all its vast extent, an intelligent and industrious, moral and capable people rule themselves. Their chief magistrates, their governors and executive officers, are men of the people, selected by the people, for short terms of service, and replaced by others, when those terms expire.

What, then, do we understand “Our Western Empire” to comprehend? All of that portion of the United States lying west of the Mississippi, and including the new Territory of Alaska. Its northern boundaries are the Arctic Ocean and Behrinor’s

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Sea and Straits west of the 140th meridian; and east of that, British America ; its western limit the Pacific Ocean ; its southern, Mexico and the Mexican Gulf ; its eastern, the Mississippi river lO

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

from its mouth to the Canada line, and the west line of British America, above the fifty-fourth parallel. It has an area of 2,671,884 square miles, of which 577,390 or abojt one-fifth, belongs to Alaska. It extends over 42° of latitude, and in its farthest western boundary, “ by Ounalaska’s lonely shore,’’ over 103° of longitude.

Leaving Alaska out of the question, as a mere dependency, the remainder of “ Our Western Empire” comprises 24° of latitude and 36° of longitude, having a breadth of nearly 2,000 miles from east to west, and a length from north to south of 1,700 miles, with an area of 2,094,494 square miles. The whole of Europe except Russia, including the great German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Republic of France, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Kingdoms of Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and the minor States and principalities, have in all only an area of 1,678,791 square miles, about four-fifths of “Our Western Empire ” exclusive of Alaska, or including it, less than three-fifths. Its population is of course much less than that of the larger European States, though somewhat greater than that of the Brazilian Empire, and increasing at a rate never equalled in the world’s history.

No empire in the world has a greater diversity of climate ; from the more than six months’ winter of the northern border, and the mountainous regions, on some of which rest eternal snows, to the tropical heats of Arizona and Southern Texas, there is the greatestpossiblediversityof moisture and drought, of heatand cold, of moderate, equable and health-giving temperature, and of rapid change, and fickle, inconstant skies. Like other large empires, it has great diversities of surface. Three ranges of lofty mountains traverse it from north to south with their numerous outlying spurs, their broad plateaux and table-lands rising to a height of 6,000 to 9,000 feet, their mesas or isolated flat-topped mountain summits, their deep and terrible canons, and their long valleys, sometimes narrow and precipitous, sometimes broad seas of verdure and flowers. These are : the Rocky Mountains, appropriately named “ the backbone of the Continent,” and occupying a

THE WEST BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI. n

position about midway between the Mississippi river and the Pacific Ocean ; west of these, and parallel with them, the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Range, whose peaks tower up into heights corresponding with those of the Alps ; and still farther west, and looking out upon the Pacific, the Coast Range, generally of lower altitude, but containing some lofty summits, whose snow-clad tops are the landmarks of the coast. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Neyada, is the great Utah or Salt Lake Basin, a vast depressed tract, none of whose streams flow outward, and some of whose lakes are salt and bitter. It has also its volcanic regions, and areas of erosion, where Dame Nature has played most fantastic tricks, now rearing lofty statues, monuments, castles, cathedrals, gateways, now scooping out vast series of basins of mineral waters either hot or cold, such as put all artificial baths to shame ; anon sending at intervals its geyserfountains two hundred and fifty feet into the air; or filling the quaking and trembling earth with jets of hot steam, reeking with sulphurous odors. At some points, after a fearful descent into some apparently dark and gloomy ravine or canon, all the hills or mountains around one seem to have put on their holiday attire; one has donned for its bridal veil a beautiful and semitransparent waterfall, whose height is so great that the water seems pulverized into glittering dust ere it reaches the valley ; another, with a greater supply of water, forms four or five gigantic cascades, each higher than Niagara, in its downward career; while still another, in a rift between the mountain summits, forms a stream of moderate size in a perpendicular fall, a thousand feet or more, sheer down into the valley. Broad lakes, some of them salt and some fresh, with many outlets or with none, are found on mountain tops or in the centre of wide valleys ; while, as we have said, one vast basin has its own system of lakes and rivers which find no way of reaching the sea.

Like other empires, not all the land has a rich and fertile soil. There are mountains, where the rocks are cold, bleak, bare and precipitous ; there are canons and ravines, whose nearly perpendicular walls, from 3,000 to 6,000 feet in height, only let in the sunlight at midday, and their clayey and rocky sides, of parti'

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

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colored hues, afford no hold for weed, vine, shrub or tree. There are plains, plateaux and 7nesas covered with alkaline powder, and having as their only vegetation the gray, lichen-hued sage-brush; plains on which the gentle rain and soft falling dew seldom or never descends — yet these monotonous and apparently barren plains, under the influence of irrigation, yield most abundant crops, and even the despised sage-brush furnishes a delicious pasturage for cattle. There are also considerable tracts where, in former times, the eroding influences of mountain streams have cut the deep strata of clay into the most fantastic forms — lands so utterly barren, that no toil could extract from them the least vestige of a crop — the “ Bad Lands ” of the Canadian trappers ; and there are also some stretches of volcanic lands, for one of which the foul and mephitic vapors, and the earthquake shocks, have prompted the expressive name of Death Valley.

But while these extraordinary displays of the power of natural forces render this Great West a true Wonderland, they really comprise but a small proportion of its surface, and no region of equal extent has a larger proportion of available and productive lands. The quantity of arable soil is immense. The wheat fields of Iowa, Minnesota, Northern and Southeastern Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska, the lands suited to the growth of Indian corn in these States and Territories, and in Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory, and in portions of Colorado and New Mexico, the cotton lands of Texas, Arkansas and New Mexico, and, on the Pacific slope, the wheat and barley fields and the vineyards and orchards of California, the wheat and corn fields of Oregon and Washington, are beyond all comparison for excellence, on this continent or any other.

In the way of grazing lands, no other country can compare with them. There are not only the cattle upon a thousand hills or plains, but thousands and tens of thousands of cattle on each vast plain or mountain slope. The States and Territories of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Northwestern Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California, can furnish, within a few years, all the beef and mutton needed to feed the rest of the world. The grasses here are

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT: WHERE IS IT? I 3

more nutritious and fattening, and give to the flesh of the cattle a more gamey flavor than those of any other known country; and even those lands which were at first reckoned as portions of the Great American Desert, lands given over to alkaline deposits and sage-brush, and on which there was but very little rainfall, now prove admirably adapted to pasturage, and, either with or without irrigation, most bounteous in their production of grain and root crops. And in this connection we may well raise the question which we next discuss.

Chapter II

The Great American Desert : Where is it? — The Hundredth Meridian — “ Eli Perkins’s ” Scare — The Facts in Reply — Colonel (Brevet Brigadier-General) Hazen on the Northern Pacific — Governor Howard’s. Answer, and other Facts — Dakota — Wyoming and its Agriculture — Montana — B. R. and Mr. Z. L. White on its Crops — The small Modicum OF Truth in these “Desert” Stories — The reported “Desert” beyond the Rockies — The Utah and Nevada Desert — Testimony of Surveyors-General — The Texan Desert and Arizona — The Great American Desert a Myth.

Thirty or forty years ago all our maps had a wide space, and some of them two or three wide spaces, inscribed, “Great American Desert.” Nearly the whole of the present States of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, and Western Minnesota ; the Territories of Wyoming, Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, Western Texas,, and after we had conquered “ a piece ” from Mexico, Arizona, most of New Mexico, Utah and Nevada, were included in this comprehensive designation. By and by silver, and some gold, were found in Nevada, and in the neighborhood of Pike’s Peak, in what is now Colorado ; but though the existence of the precious metals there could not be denied, yet the terrors of the desert to be passed through (terrors of whose reality the wagontrail marked at almost every step by skeletons of cattle, and too often, alas ! by the bones of emigrants, gave most ghastly proof) were such that only the most stout-hearted could brave them. After some years the tide of emigration, which at first had

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

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been confined to the eastern counties of Kansas and Nebraska, and had not reached the western counties of Iowa, and still less those of Minnesota, began to rise and overflow the adjacent counties and districts. The Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railways had plunged into this desert, and being all land grant roads, had made the discovery that these lands were not really a desert, but were capable of yielding excellent crops, and of furnishing superior pasturage to cattle and sheep. The line of settlement has advanced with each year till now it has reached the loist meridian west from Greenwich, in Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota, and overleaping all barriers has extended to the foothills and peaks of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, and with moderate irrigation has produced from these supposed desert-lands the most astonishing crops, and has furnished, as we have already said, pasturage so rich and abundant, to hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep, that their flesh is more highly prized than any other in the market.

Yet there have not been wanting those who from one motive or another, have sought to depreciate these lands, and have declared, in the face of the most conclusive evidence, that the whole region west of the looth meridian was a barren desert, incapable of producing crops or furnishing pasturage sufficient for the subsistence of men or animals, and that it would remain so until God changed the physical laws which govern the distribution of clouds, and rain, levelled the mountains, and made the climate like that of the East. It is very easy to theorize on these matters, and to demonstrate that because, according to certain premises, a certain result should follow, therefore it will inevitably follow; but he is not a wise man who neglects to test the truth of his theories by facts.

The two regions, which, within the past decade, have been persistently denounced by these pseudo-scientific theorists as portions of the Great American Desert, rainless, treeless, barren and incapable of ever being inhabited, are the regions lying near the lOOth meridian west from Greenwich and westward indefinitely,

THE GREA7' AMER/CAN DESERT: W//ERE IS IT? j5

though some of these pessimists admitted that there might be some fertile valleys among the Rocky Mountains ; and second, the region from about the 107th meridian westward to the 1 14th. The first tract includes Western Texas, at least two-thirds of the Indian Territory, the western third of Kansas, almost half of Nebraska, Eastern New Mexico, more than half of Colorado, nearly all of Wyoming, more than half of Dakota, and the whole of Montana. In regard to Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, as late as the winter or early spring of 1879, Mr. Landon, a popular lecturer, better known to the public under his noin de plume of Eli Perkins, published in the Cincinnati Enquirer, and soon after in the New York Sun, the following article:

LET EMIGRANTS WESTWARD LOOK OUT!

An awful trap is being set for credulous emigrants. Thousands of these emigrants are settling west of the rain belt, and they don’t know it. They are going out too far on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Kansas Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Northern Pacific Railroads.

“ Where is the drought line? ” asks the reader.

“ Draw a line from Austin, Texas, to Bismarck, Minnesota, on the Northern Pacific, and all west of that line is the drought country. Five years out of eight, crops will entirely fail west of this line. Last year was an exception to the rule, and this is why so many emigrants are venturing too far West this year. The land-sharks are deceiving them, and are pushing a vast army of emigrants into a famine region.”

‘‘What makes this region west of the looth parallel a desert region?”

“ Because it rains just as much water as there is water evaporated each year. If it rained more water than is evaporated, it would run down into the ocean, and the land would soon be covered with water. Rains run to the ocean in rivers, and the air evaporates the water of the ocean and carries it inland. Clouds form rainfalls, and back goes the water on to the earth, then into the ocean again. Now, before the air from the Gulf or ocean reaches Bismarck, or the middle of Nebraska or Kansas, this wet air which started from the ocean becomes dry. There is no water in it ; the water has all fallen out of it in rain, and it has run back to the sea.”

“ But why is San Antonio subject to drought when it is so close to the Gulf? ”

“ Because the air of San Antonio, on the Staked Plains in Texas, and in Arizona, comes up through Mexico. It is dry before it starts. It does not come from the Gulf. Mexico is hot. A perpetual current of hot, dry air blows over Mexico and fans Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado with atmosphere as dry as wind from the Desert of Sahara. This dry-air current, blowing i6

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

up from Mexico and Arizona, strikes the high mountains in Colorado. Here, in the centre of the continent, within seventy-five miles of Pike’s Peak, is the source of the Red, Colorado, Rio Grande, Arkansas and Missouri rivers. This is the backbone of North America. The high, cold peaks condense any moisture that there may be in the air coming up from the south, and make it into snow. Then this cold, dry air passes on up the centre of the continent, making a perpetual desert. It prevents any damp air from coming east of the looth parallel. When we reach the Northern Pacific and Manitoba another current of wind, a damp current, blows from the Pacific Ocean. There is no desert there, where the Pacific wind heads off the wind from Mexico. Now, I say, thousands of innocent emigrants have taken up farms during the last year west of the rain parallel. Of course they will be ruined, and you will see them coming back broken-hearted and discouraged.”

“ Will it always be a desert west of the looth parallel? ”

“ Yes, until the Almighty changes the course of the winds, takes down the mountain-peaks, and stops the clouds from raining all their water out in the East before they get to the desert.”

Ei I Perkins.

We will not stop here to notice the deplorable ignorance manifest in almost every line of this article of Eli Perkins, ignorance which would cause any intelligent school-boy of twelve years old to blush with shame, such as persistently speaking of meridians of longitude as parallels ; locating Bismarck in Minnesota, mistaking the longitude of the places of which he speaks, and contradicting himself by saying in one sentence that the air which reaches Bismarck is dry, and there is no rain in it, and in the next that “when we reach the Northern Pacific and Manitoba, another current of wind, a damp current, blows from the Pacific Ocean. • There- is no desert there, where the Pacific wind heads off the wind from Mexico.’' Yet Bismarck is on that Northern Pacific Railroad, and just south of Manitoba. It would be as well for “ Eli Perkins” to go to school fora few months before he attempts to write for the papers.

But while it is almost mathematically proved that the “ Great American Desert ” is a myth, receding from us as we try to approach it, it is not to be denied that here, as in other empires, there arc some desert lands, treeless, though not quite rainless;

MINERAL AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTS.

often incapable of cultivation, though they may be rich in fossils or in the precious metals ; and that in these deserts may be found some of the most wonderful phenomena on the globe.

Chapter III

The whole Region Abounding in Mineral Wealth — Production of Gold AND Silver, other Metals, etc. — Forests — Grasses — Root Crops — Fruits — Viniculture.

Most of these States and Territories abound in mineral wealth. All the Territories and all the States except Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas have either gold or silver mines or both, and it is by no means certain that even these will prove to be exceptions, though it is to be hoped they may; for agricultural products furnish a surer and better avenue to the prosperity of the entire population, than the richest mines of the precious metals. The golden grain of these States is a better possession than the gold mines of California or Colorado, or the silver of Nevada or Montana.

Yet we would not underrate the vast mineral wealth of this Western Empire. It is possible, though not at all certain, that some of the Peruvian mines or those of Mexico may have more extensive deposits of gold or silver than are already opened, or are yet to be discovered in the Great West; but the production of none of them has been as great, in so short a period, as that of our mines, and we have just arrived at a stage of progress, when our production may be almost indefinitely increased. During the first ten years after the discovery of gold and silver in California, and the West, it is difficult to estimate with accuracy the production of the precious metals there; but Professor Rossiter W. Raymond, who has devoted much time and study to the problem, names, as the result of his inquiries, a sum total of gold and silver which, by adding the production of 1878 and 1879, gives an aggregate for the Great West for the thirty years ending i8

OUR IVES'fERX EMPIRE.

June 30, 1879, of $i,947»055»S34» almost two billionsof the precious metals. By a singular coincidence these are very nearly the amount of the product of the ten principal items of our agriculture for the year 1879. That product was $1,904,480,659. The completion of the Sutro tunnel in Nevada, which will make deep mining practicable, in those hitherto productive lodes, and the discoveries of carbonate ores of silver and chlorides or horn silver in Utah, in the San Juan and Gunnison districts and elsewhere, on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, the new and extensive deposits of both gold and silver in the Black Hills, in Utah and in Montana, and the increasing annual production of bullion, warrant the belief that we are just entering upon a new era in the production of the precious metals, which will far exceed that of the combined production of the Pacific States and Australia, twenty-five years ago.

But our mineral productions in our Western Empire are by no means confined to gold and silver. Quicksilver, which is an absolute necessity for gold mining the world over, is more abundant in California, Nevada and Arizona than anywhere else in the world, and though, in the past, tedious litigation has prevented the mines from yielding their full product, yet not only has the large demand for our own mines been supplied, but we have exported millions of flasks to other countries. Nickel, platinum, and in vast quantities, copper, lead, iron and zinc, are among the products of this young empire ; and coal of all qualities is scattered in localities where it is most needed.

Portions of this W estern Empire are lacking in forest growths. The vast prairies and plains east of the Rocky Mountains had been so often burned over by the Indians, either carelessly or to promote the growth of the grasses, on which the buffalo, their principal game, fed, that though in times long ago they were covered with heavy forests, they seemed to have lost their ability to sustain any large amount of timber. Only near the banks of streams was there any considerable growth of trees, and these, in some sections, only the comparatively worthless cottonwood. But this deficiency will soon pass away. Encouraged by the Timber culture act of Congress, and by the desire to produce

M/A'ERAL AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTS.

trees instead of sending great distances for lumber, millions of trees have been planted, largely of the rapidly growing kinds, as the ailantus, locust, Osage orange, etc.; and even on the alkaline plains they are growing and thriving, and have already increased to a sensible extent the amount of the scanty rainfall. But only a portion of the region lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains can be called treeless. In Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Arkansas, parts of Texas and the Indian Territory, there are vast tracts of heavy timber, and the lumber exported from some of these States forms a very considerable portion of their productive wealth. West of the Rocky Mountains there is generally no lack of forests, especially on the mountain slopes; Utah, New Mexico and Arizona are, however, but sparingly supplied with timber, and much of the land suffers from drought except where irrigation is possible. On the Pacific slope, portions of California and Nevada, all of Western Oregon and Washington are remarkable for the gigantic height and bulk of their forest trees. The Redwoods and Sequoias, which range from 300 to 475 feet in height, are not the only giants of these forests ; several species of pine and fir and some of the cedars tower from 250 to 350 feet in height on the lower hills of the Coast range, in California, Oregon and Washington. In Eastern Washington and Oregon there are extensive, elevated plains, without much timber, which are very cold in winter and intensely hot in summer. In Wyoming and Colorado the mountains are generally clothed with forests, up to a point somewhat below the snow line ; but the plains, plateaux and foothills are very often devoid of trees, except along the water-courses, or where they have been planted by man.

Over much of this vast territory, nearly all of it beyond the Rocky Mountains, and the alkaline plains east of that range, there is little or nothing which can be called sod; the long,! dry summers would destroy it if it existed. But the buffalo and gramma grasses, more nutritious than our cultivated grasses, are adapted to the summer drought, and furnish all the year round a most delicious pasturage for cattle. The bunch grass, and the white sage-brush (after frost), are eagerly cropped.

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

Wherever, as in California, Nevada, and portions of New Mexico, the cultivation of grasses for feeding cattle has been found desirable, the Alfalfa grass, a species of South American lucerne, which yields two or three enormous crops a year, and is admirably adapted to this climate, furnishes at small expense a succulent and nutritious food for cattle and sheep. There are also other forage grasses, most of them native to the coast, which amply supply the absence of our sod-making grasses in the Atlantic States.

In the season of melting snows, and moderate rains, these desolate and dreary plains are resplendent with flowers of every hue, and many of them redolent of the sweetest perfumes.

The root crops of this entire region are remarkable alike for their abundance, the great size they attain, and their excellent quality. In the deep, rich, and easily penetrated soil of all these States and Territories root crops seem to run riot, and grow without stint. The common potato, the sweet potato and the yam, yield from 400 to 600 bushels to the acre, and are, perhaps, the most profitable crops which can be raised. Turnips, both yellow and white, carrots, beets, etc., yield fabulous . quantities of such gigantic size that they are hardly recognizable. The whole melon tribe, including the pumpkin, squash, and cucumber, as well as the watermelon, muskmelon, cantelope, and citron-melon exhibit their greatest fertility and most abundant productiveness in the most arid and desert-looking of these lands. Arizona, Southern California, the southern part of New Mexico, and Western Texas, are peculiarly adapted to these creeping vines and their cooling fruits.

This Great West is destined to be the garden of the world, in its cultivation and conservation of edible fruits and their products. Its great variety of climates and temperatures, and the elevation of its arable lands, even in semi-tropical regions, permits, and will continue to permit and demand, the production of the greatest variety of choice fruits to be found in any one region on the earth’s surface. In the northern portion, the apples, pears, quinces, plums, cherries, and small fruits of Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and

MINERAL AND, VEGETABLE PRODUCTS. 2 1

Northern California are unsurpassed either in size or flavor by those of any other part of the world. It has been asserted that the larger fruits of California, as well as its vegetables, though of great size, lack the succulency and fine flavor of those raised in the Eastern States, but there is no reason to believe that this is true. Fruits carried to great distances from their native soil, and kept for months or years, do lose something of their flavor, as is well known ; but eaten where they are grown, they are unsurpassed in excellence. The belt below this, consisting of the States of Iowa, Missouri, Southern Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska, Wyoming, Northern Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Central California, adds to this list the peach, the apricot, and, above all, the grape; Already California is more largely engaged in the culture of the vine than any other country in the world. Every known species and variety which possesses merit is grown there, and though her great vineyards are so young, she is only second to France in the amount of her wine production. Nowhere can finer “ raisins of the sun ” be produced than there. Her peaches are excellent, but not so much attention has been given to their culture, as in other regions.

The whole belt of States and Territories we have named are capable of a like development in viniculture with California. Their grapes may have a slightly different flavor, and the wines produced from them may be as distinguishable, by the cultivated taste of the connoisseur, as those of Tokay and Xeres or Rheims ; but they will be in as great demand as the wines of the Californian vintage.

Farther south, in Arkansas, the Indian Territory, Texas, Arizona, Southern New Mexico, Southern Utah and Nevada, and Southern California, sub-tropical fruits abound — the orange, lemon, lime, fig, olive, pomegranate, banana, guava, Madeira nut, pecan, and the finest and most luscious varieties of the peach, are some of the treasures which Dame Nature lays up for her children in the sunny South. There are also many native fruits and nuts, less widely known, but not less delicious or grateful to the taste, than those we have named, to be found in the forests of the Great West.

OUR WESTERN EMPIRE.

Chapter IV

Wild Animals and Game — Beasts of Prey — Grizzly and other Bears— Mr. Murphy’s Grizzly Bear Story — The Cougar, Puma, or Panther — The Jaguar and other Felid^ — Lynxes — The Marten and Weasel Tribe — The Gray Wolf — The Coyote — Amphibia — The Whale Tribe — Birds OF Prey — Perchers and Song Birds — Pigeons and Grouse — Waders and Swimmers — Reptiles — Fishes — Mollusks and Crustaceans — Domestic Animals.