IS THE PRAIRIE REGION A DESERT 1 177 



of the adjacent mountains, and ohietly from the melting of the snow depos- 

 ited on these duiing the winter. This snow is the result of the condensa- 

 tion of moisture in the air brought from a great distance — perhaps even 

 from the Pacific Ocean — by the prevailing westerly winds. It is as unphilo- 

 sophical to take it for granted that the climate of Utah could be essentially 

 altered by the irrigation of a hundred or two of square miles, as to suppose 

 that planting trees on the meadows of the Connecticut River, between 

 Springfield and Northampton, would have a perceptible influence on the 

 distribution of rain in Massachusetts. 



That the temporary rise of Great Salt Lake had nothing to do with the 

 cultivation of a minute portion of the adjacent region is sufficiently proved 

 by the fact that Winuemucca and Pyramid Lakes were at the same time 

 rising, and in an equally rapid ratio with Great Salt Lake.* But during 

 this very period of their most rapid increase, and for some years previous 

 to it, the adjacent regions in California and Nevada were being stripped of 

 their trees with the greatest rapidity. There is just as much reason for 

 inferring that the rise of Winnemucca and Pj'ramid Lakes was produced by 

 disforesting the country, as that the similar increase of Great Salt Lake was 

 the result of tree-planting by the Mormons; in other words, thei'e is no 

 truth in either statement. 



It is a favorite idea with people living in the Mississippi Valley, who can- 

 not bear to admit that their country can, by any possibility, be deficient in 

 any of the good things of this world, that the treeless condition of certain 

 portions of their fertile territory has been artificially produced. It is thought 

 that forests once covered the prairies, and that the Indian aborigines have 

 burned them off. This must have happened before the settlement of the 

 country by the whites, since the very earliest European travellers — Henne- 

 pin, for instance — describe the prairies just as we see them now. It is not 

 necessar}' to enter into an argument to refute so absurd a theory. Those who 

 advocate it can have no eye for nature, and no experience in the study of 

 problems of physical geography. It is only referred to in this connection 

 for the purpose of proving the almost self-evident fact that absence of forest 

 vegetation does not necessarily prevent a country fiom being rich, pros- 

 perous, and able to support a dense population. The State of Illinois, for 

 instance, may be properly set down as almost wholly a " prairie country," 



* Mi\ King states (Geology of the Fortieth Parallel, Vol. I. p. 506) that betweeu 1867 aud 1871 the area 

 of Winnemucca Lake had nearly doubled. 



