Buffalo Land

As specimen ranches, may be named the following: Santa Catrutos Ranch belongs to Richard King. Amount of land, 84,132 acres. The stock consists of 65,000 cattle, 10,000 horses, 7,000 sheep, 8,000 goats. Three hundred Mexicans are employed, and 1,000 saddle horses, on the place. O'Connor's ranch, near Goliad, is an estate possessing about 50,000 cattle. The Robideaux ranch, on the Gulf, belonging to Mr. Kennedy, contains 142,840 acres of land, and has 30,000 beef cattle in addition to other stock.

THE CLIMATE OF THE PLAINS

Mr. R. S. Elliott, who has studied this matter carefully, says: "The plains have been so often described as a rainless region that great misconception in regard to the climate has prevailed. The absolute precipitation is much greater than has been in past years supposed, and is due to other causes. Meteorologists who have described the rain-fall of the plains as derived only or principally from the remaining moisture of winds from the Pacific, after the passage of the Nevada and Rocky Mountain ranges, have been greatly in error, and the better conclusion now is, with all authorities who have given any special attention to the subject, that the moisture which fertilizes the Mississippi Valley, including the broad, grassy plains, is derived from the Gulf of Mexico.

"At Fort Riley about sixty-nine per cent, of the annual precipitation is in spring and summer; at Fort Kearney, eighty-one; and at Fort Laramie, seventy-two per cent. From observations at Forts Harker, Hays, and Wallace, on the line of this road, the same rule seems to hold good. Records have not been long enough continued at these three posts to give a long average, but the mean appears to be between seventeen and nineteen inches at Hays and Wallace, and possibly rather more at Harker. The actual average for 1868 and 1869 at Hays is 18.76 inches, and for the first six months of 1870 the record is 10.68 inches. At Wallace the record for 1869 was over seventeen inches, and in 1870, up to October 1, about the same amount had fallen.

"Without records there can be only conjecture; and I can only remark that there does not seem to be much diminution in the annual rain-fall until we get as far west as the one hundred and third meridian. Thence to the base of the mountains (except perhaps in the timbered portions of the great divide south of the line of this railway) the annual average may be possibly two or three inches less than in the midst of the plains—a peculiarity explained, hypothetically, by the fact that the region 'lies to the westward of the general course of the moisture currents of air flowing northward from the Gulf of Mexico, and is so near the mountains as to lose much of the precipitation that localities in the plains east and north-east are favored with. The mountains seem to exercise an influence—electrical and magnetical—in attracting moisture, which is condensed in the cooler regions of their summits, while the plains at their feet may be parched and heated to excess.' This explanation may be fanciful, but the fact remains that near the mountains the rains seem to decrease north of the great divide; fortunately, however, this occurs in a region where irrigation may be applied extensively and where there is sufficient moisture to nourish bountiful crops of grass.

"The vegetation of the plains along wagon tracks and rail road embankments shows a capability of production scarcely suggested by the surface where undisturbed: wherever the earth is broken up, the wild sunflower (Helianthus), and others of the taller-growing plants, though previously unknown in the vicinity, at once spring up.

"I have been on the plains all the time since early in May till this date (22d of September). There has been much dry weather, but I have not seen one cloudless day—no day on which the sun would rise clear and roll along a canopy of brass to the west. There has always been humidity enough to form clouds at the proper height; and on many days they would be seen defining, by their flat bottoms, the exact line where condensation became sufficient to render the vapor visible. I conclude, from all this, that abundant moisture has floated over the plains to have given us a great deal more rain than would be desirable if it had been precipitated.

"Sometimes a storm would be seen to gather near the horizon, and we could see the rain pending from the clouds like a fringe, hanging apparently in mid-air, unable to reach the expectant earth. The rain stage of condensation had been reached above, but the descending shower was re-vaporized apparently, and thus arrested.

"These hot winds are not, so far as I have observed, apt to be constant in one place for any considerable length of time; they strike your face suddenly, and perhaps in a minute are gone. They seem to run along in streaks or ovenfulls with the winds of ordinary (but rather high) temperature. They do not begin, I believe, till in July, as a general rule, and are over by September 1, or perhaps by August 15. Their origin I take to be, of course, in heated regions south or southwest of us; but their peculiar occurrence, so capricious and often so brief, I can not explain to myself satisfactorily.

"I may remark that this season, since about the 15th of July, in these distant plains, has given us rain enough to make beautifully verdant the spots in the prairie burnt off during the 'heated' term in July. From Kit Carson eastward, the rains have been, I think, exceptionally abundant. All through the summer we have had dew occasionally, and it has been remarked that buffalo meat has been more difficult of preservation than heretofore—facts indicative of humidity in the atmosphere, even where but little rain-fall was witnessed. Turnips sown in August would have made a crop in this vicinity—four hundred and twenty-two miles west of the state line of Missouri,"

CLIMATIC CHANGES ON THE PLAINS

"Facts such as these," continues the same writer, "seem to sustain the popular persuasion that a climatic change is taking place, promoted by the spread of settlements westwardly, breaking up portions of the prairie soil, covering the earth with plants that shade the ground more than the short grasses; thus checking or modifying the reflection of heat from the earth's surface, etc. The fact is also noted that even where the prairie soil is not disturbed, the short buffalo grass disappears as the 'frontier' extends westward, and its place is taken by grasses and other herbage of taller growth. That this change of the clothing of the plains, if sufficiently extensive, might have a modifying influence on the climate, I do not doubt; but whether the change has been already spread over a large enough area, and whether our apparently or really wetter seasons may not be part of a cycle, are unsettled questions.

"The civil engineers of the railways believe that the rains and humidity of the plains have increased during the extension of railroads and telegraphs across them. If this is the case, it may be that the mysterious electrical influence in which they seem to have faith, but do not profess to explain, has exercised a beneficial influence. What effect, if any, the digging and grading, the iron rails, the tension of steam in locomotives, the friction of metallic surfaces, the poles and wires, the action of batteries, etc., could possibly or probably have on the electrical conditions, as connected with the phenomena of precipitation, I do not, of course, undertake to say. It may be that wet seasons have merely happened to coincide with railroads and telegraphs. It is to be observed that the poles of the telegraph are quite frequently destroyed by lightning; and it is probable that the lightning thus strikes in many places where before the erection of the telegraph it was not apt to strike, and perhaps would not reach the earth at all.

"It is certain that rains have increased; this increase has coincided with the extension of settlements, railroads, and telegraphs. If influenced by these, the change of climate will go on; if by extra mundane influences, the change may be permanent, progressive, or retrograde. I think there are good grounds to believe it will be progressive. Within the last fifteen years, in Western Missouri and Iowa, and in Eastern Kansas and Nebraska, a very large aggregate surface has been broken up, and holds more of the rains than formerly. During the same period modifying influences have been put in motion in Montana, Utah, and Colorado. Very small areas of timbered land west of the Missouri have been cleared—not equal, perhaps, to the area of forest, orchard, and vineyards planted. Hence it may be said that all the acts of man in this vast region have tended to produce conditions on the earth's surface ameliorative of the climate. With extended settlements on the Arkansas, Canadian, and Red River of the south, as well as on the Arkansas, on the river system of the Kaw Valley, and on the Platte, the ameliorating conditions will be extended in like degree; and it partakes more of sober reason than wild fancy to suppose that a permanent and beneficial change of climate may be experienced. The appalling deterioration of large portions of the earth's surface, through the acts of man in destroying the forests, justifies the trust that the culture of taller herbage and trees in a region heretofore covered mainly by short grasses may have a converse effect. Indeed, in Central Kansas nature seems to almost precede settlements by the taller grasses and herbage."

THE TREES AND FUTURE FORESTS OF THE PLAINS

Mr. Elliott continues his article as follows: "The principal native trees on the plains west of ninety-seventh meridian are: Cottonwood, walnut, elm, ash, box-elder, hackberry, plum, red cedar. To these may be added willow and grape-vines, and also the locust and wild cherry mentioned by Abert as occurring on the Purgatory. The black walnut extends to the one-hundredth meridian. The elm and ash are of similar, perhaps greater range. Hackberry has been observed west of one hundred and first meridian. Cottonwood, elder, red cedar, plum, and willow are persistent to the base of the mountains. The extensive pine forest on the 'great divide' south of Denver, although stretching seventy to eighty miles east from the mountains, is not taken into view as belonging to the plains proper. Its existence, however, suggests the use of its seeds in artificial plantations in that region. The fossil wood imbedded in the cretaceous strata in many parts of the plains is left out of consideration, as belonging to a previous, though recent, geological age; but the single specimens of trees found growing at wide intervals are silent witnesses to the possibility of extended forest growth.

"Were it possible to break up the surface to a depth of two feet, from the ninety-seventh meridian to the mountains, and from the thirty-fifth to the forty-fifth parallel, we should have in a single season a growth of taller herbage over the entire area, less reflection of the sun's heat, more humidity in the atmosphere, more constancy in springs, pools, and streams, more frequent showers, fewer violent storms, and less caprice and fury in the winds. A single year would witness a changed vegetation and a new climate. In three years (fires kept out) there would be young trees in numerous places, and in twenty years there would be fair young forests. The description of the 'broad, grassy plains,' given in the foregoing pages, attests their capacity to sustain animal life. For cattle, sheep, horses, and mules, they are a natural pasture in summer, with (in many parts) hay cured standing for winter. The famed Pampas, with their great extremes of wet and drought, can not bear comparison with our western plains. For grazing purposes, the habitable character of our vast traditional 'desert' is generally conceded, and hence it need not be enlarged on here."

THE SUPPLY OF FUEL

Of the question of fuel for the future dwellers upon the face of Buffalo Land, Hayden, in his report, speaks as follows:

"The question often arises in the minds of visitors to this region, how the law of compensation supplies the want of fuel in the absence of trees for that use. Many persons have taken the position that the Creator never made such a vast country, with a soil of such wonderful fertility, and rendered it so suitable for the abode of man, without storing in the earth beds of carbon for his needs. If this idea could be shown to be true in any case, we would ask why are the immense beds of coal stored away in the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia, while at the same time the surface is covered with dense forests of timber. We now know that this law does not apply to the natural world; and, if it did, this western country would be a remarkable exception. The State of Nebraska seems to be located on the western rim of the great coal basin of the West, and only thin seams of poor coal will probably ever be found; but in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming, and Colorado, coal in immense quantities has been hidden away for ages, and the Union Pacific Railroad has now brought it near the door of every man's dwelling.

"These Rocky Mountain coal-beds will one day supply an abundance of fuel for more than one hundred thousand square miles along the Missouri River of the most fertile agricultural land in the world."

Of this coal area, Persifor Frazier, Jr., says: "Those beds which occur on the east flank of the Rocky Mountains have been followed for five hundred miles and more, north and south; and if it be true that these are 'fragments of one great basin, interrupted here and there by the upheaval of mountain chains, or concealed by the deposition of newer formations,' then their extension east and west, or from the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains or Black Hills to Weber Canyon, where an excellent coal is mined, will fall but little short of five hundred miles. Throughout this extent these beds of coal are found between the upper cretaceous and lower tertiary (or in the transition beds of Hayden), wherever these transition beds occur, whether on the extreme flanks or in the valleys and parks between the numerous mountain ranges. Assuming that the eroding agencies together have cut off one-half of the coal from this area, and taking one-half of the remainder as their average longitudinal extent, we have over fifty thousand square miles of coal lands, accounting the latitudinal extent as only five hundred miles; whereas we have no reason to believe that it terminates within these bounds, but, on the contrary, good reason for supposing that it extends northward far into Canada, and southward with the Cordilleras. All this territory has been omitted in the estimate of the extent of our coal fields."

DISTRICTS CONTIGUOUS TO THE PLAINS

The reader has now had the salient features of the great plains placed before him in succession. The more interesting districts immediately adjoining will well repay the reader for a brief consideration.

THE NORTH PLATTE DISTRICT

A late writer, who has studied the country of which he speaks very closely,6 thus describes the North Platte District:

"The distance from the mouth of the North Platte, where it joins the South Platte on the Union Pacific Railroad, to its sources in the great Sierra Madre, whose lofty sides form the North Park, in which this stream takes its rise, is more than eight hundred miles. Its extreme southern tributaries head in the gorges of the mountains one hundred miles south of the railroad, and receive their water from the melting snows of these snow-capped ranges. Its extreme western tributaries rise in the Wahsatch and Wind River ranges, sharing the honor of conveying the crystal snow waters from the continental divide with the Columbia and Colorado of the Pacific. Its northern tributaries start oceanward from the Big Horn Mountains, three hundred miles north of the starting-point of its southern sources.

"It drains a country larger than all New England and New York together. East of the Alleghany Mountains there is no river comparable to this clear, swift mountain stream in its length or in the extent of country it drains.

"The main valley of the North Platte, two hundred miles from its mouth to where it debouches through the Black Hills out on to the great plains, is an average of ten miles wide. Nearly all this area—two thousand square miles—is covered with a dense growth of grass, yielding thousands of tons of hay. The bluffs bordering these intervals are rounded and grass-grown, gradually smoothing out into great grassy plains, extending north and south as far as the eye can see.

"Of the country, Alexander Majors says, in a letter to the writer of this article: 'The favorite wintering ground of my herders for the past twenty years has been from the Caché a la Poudre on the south to Fort Fetterman on the north, embracing all the country along the eastern base of the Black Hills.' It was of this country that Mr. Seth E. Ward spoke, when he says: 'I am satisfied that no country in the same latitude, or even far south of it, is comparable to it as a grazing and stock-raising country. Cattle and stock generally are healthy, and require no feeding the year round, the rich 'bunch' and 'gramma' grasses of the plains and mountains keeping them, ordinarily, fat enough for beef during the entire winter,'

"All this region east of the Black Hills is at an elevation less than five thousand feet. The climate, as reported from Fort Laramie for a period of twenty years, is 50° Fahrenheit. The mean temperature for the spring months is 47°, for the summer months 72°, for autumn 60°, for winter 31°. The annual rain-fall is about eighteen inches—distributed as follows: Spring, 8.69 inches; summer, 5.70 inches; autumn, 3.69 inches. The snow fall is eighteen inches.

"There is in the North Platte Basin, east of the Black Hills divide, at least eight million acres of pasturage, with the finest and most lasting streams, and good shelter in the bluffs and canyons. As I have said before, we can only judge of the extent and resources of such a single region by comparison. Ohio has six million sheep, yielding eighteen million pounds of wool, bringing herd farmers an aggregate of four and one-half million dollars. This eight million acres of pasture would at least feed eight million sheep, yielding twenty-four million pounds of wool, and, at the same price as Ohio wool, six million dollars. Now, this money, instead of going to build up ranches, stock-farms, store-houses, woolen mills, and all the components of a great and thrifty settlement, is sent by our wool-growers and woollen manufacturers to Buenos Ayres, to Africa, and Australia, to enrich other people and other lands, while our wool-growing resources remain undeveloped.

"As you follow the North Platte up through the Black Hill Canyon, you come out upon the great Laramie plains, which lie between the Black Hills on the east and the snowy range on the west. These plains are ninety miles north and south, and sixty miles east and west. They are watered by the Big and Little Laramie Rivers, Deer Creek, Rock Creek, Medicine Bow River, Cooper Creek, and other tributaries of the North Platte. It is on the extreme northern portion of these plains, in the valley of Deer Creek, that General Reynolds wintered during the winter of 1860, and of which he remarks, on pages seventy-four and seventy-five of his 'Explorations of the Yellowstone," as follows:

"Throughout the whole season's march the subsistence of our animals had been obtained by grazing after we had reached our camp in the afternoon, and for an hour or two between the dawn of day and our time of starting. The consequence was that, when we reached our winter quarters there were but few animals in the train that were in a condition to have continued the march without a generous grain diet. Poorer and more broken-down creatures it would be difficult to find. In the spring they were in as fine condition for commencing another season's work as could be desired. A greater change in their appearance could not have been produced even if they had been grain-fed and stable-housed all winter. Only one was lost, the furious storm of December coming on before it had gained sufficient strength to endure it. The fact that seventy exhausted animals, turned out to winter on the plains the first of November, came out in the spring in the best condition, and with the loss of but one of their number, is the most forcible commentary I can make on the quality of the grass and the character of the winter.'

"These plains have been favorite herding grounds of the buffalo away back in the pre-historic age of this country. Their bones lie bleaching in all directions, and their paths, deeply worn, cover the whole plain like a net-work. Their 'wallows,' where these shaggy lords of animal creation tore deep pits into the surface of the ground, are still to be seen. Elk, antelope, and deer still feed here, and the mountain sheep are found on the mountain sides and in the more secluded valleys of the Sierra Madre range—all proving conclusively that this has afforded winter pasturage from time immemorial. Since 1849 many herds of work-oxen, belonging to emigrants, freighters, and ranchmen, have grazed here each winter.

"South of the Laramie plains is the North Park, one of three great parks of the Rocky Mountains, so fully described by Richardson, Bross, and Bowles. This North Park is formed by the great Snowy Range. It is a valley from six to eight thousand feet high, ninety miles long, and forty miles wide, surrounded by snowy mountains from thirteen to fifteen thousand feet high. These mountain tops and sides are completely covered with dense growths of forests; the lower hill-sides and this great valley are covered with grasses. The forests and mountains afford ample shelter from sweeping winds. Here, as well as on the Laramie plains, the buffalo grazed in great herds; and here the Ute hunters, from some hidden canyons, dashed down among them on their trained and fleet ponies, shooting their arrows with unerring aim on all sides, and having such glorious sport as kings might court and envy. The Indians are now gone from this valley, and the buffalo nearly so. On the two million acres in this valley not twenty head of cattle graze.

"This great park, splendidly watered by the three forks of the Platte, and by a hundred small streams that drain these lofty mountains of their snows and rains—rich in all kinds of nutritious grasses, plentifully supplied with timber; on the tertiary coal fields, with iron, copper, lead, and gold—has not one real settler. There are a few miners, but where there should be flocks and herds of sheep and cattle without number, there is only the wild game—the elk, antelope, and deer."

THE VALLEYS OF THE WHITE EARTH AND NIOBRARA

These streams are branches of the Missouri—the one mainly in Dakota Territory, and the other in Nebraska. The following graphic paragraphs concerning them are from Hayden again:

"I have spent many days exploring this region (the White Earth Valley) when the thermometer was 112° in the shade, and there was no water suitable for drinking purposes within fifteen miles. But it is only to the geologist that this place can have any permanent attraction. He can wind his way through the wonderful canyons among some of the grandest ruins in the world. Indeed, it resembles a gigantic city fallen to decay. Domes, towers, minarets and spires may be seen on every side, which assume a great variety of shapes when viewed in the distance. Not unfrequently the rising or the setting sun will light up these grand old ruins with a wild, strange beauty, reminding one of a city illuminated in the night, when seen from some high point. The harder layers project from the sides of the valley or canyon with such regularity that they appear like seats, one above the other, of some vast amphitheater.

"It is at the foot of these apparent architectural remains that the curious fossil treasures are found. In the oldest beds we find the teeth and jaws of a Hyopotamus, a river-horse much like the hippopotamus, which must have sported in his pride in the marshes that bordered this lake. So, too, the Titanotherum, a gigantic pachyderm, was associated with a species of hornless rhinoceros. These huge rhinoceroid animals appear at first to have monopolized this entire region, and the plastic, sticky clay of the lowest bed of this basin, in which the remains were found, seems to have formed a suitable bottom of the lake in which these thick-skinned monsters could wallow at pleasure."

Of the fauna of the Niobrara and Loup Fork Valleys, he speaks as follows: "In the later fauna were the remains of a number of species of extinct camels, one of which was of the size of the Arabian camel, a second about two-thirds as large. Not less interesting are the remains of a great variety of forms of the horse family, one of which was about as large as the ordinary domestic animal, and the smallest not more than two or two and a half feet in height, with every intermediate grade in size."