45 



islanded uplifts of iiigeiious iutrusion, such as the Black Hills, and carved 

 into the fantastic forms of the Bad Lands; but over much of it the land- 

 scape has no feature but the bounding curve of the horizon. Overloaded 

 and dwindling rivers from the mountains wind across it in tortuous or 

 braided channels. It is semi-arid steppe, a transition between forest and 

 prairie on the one hand and desert on the other. It is the domain of 

 bunch grass, fitted by nature for the home of nomad herdsman. 



The first chapter in the eventful geography of the steppe is concern- 

 ed with the buffalo and the plains Indian. You know the story of the 

 millions of "humpbacked cattle" and the thousands of fierce and restless 

 red men who lived upon their tongues and hides, and with an economic 

 basis and an energy that might have made them masters of the continent, 

 expended both in killing one another. The white men brought them horses, 

 firearms, firewater and smallpox, a combination which probably shortened 

 their career. 



The first serious invasion of the country was that of the cattle kings 

 and cowboys from tlie south, who drove their herds over "the long trail, ' 

 and inaugurated the strange, brief, pastoral episode of the steppe. The 

 conflict between the Indian and the cowboy raged for a decade with no 

 decisive results until the prairie schooners of the Mormons, Oregon emi- 

 grants, and gold seekers bound for California and Pikes Peak, brought new 

 elements to tuni the scale. For another decade the life of the steppe was a 

 chaotic welter of Indian, cowboy, emigrant, miner, hunter, freighter, coach 

 driver, pony express rider, outlaw, soldier and engineer, which lives in 

 literature and fascinates young and old as the most adventurous and 

 romantic chapter in American history. The civil war demonstrated by 

 liow slender a thread the Pacific States were bound to the Union and 

 spurred Congress to tie them with iron bands. The completion of the 

 Union and Central Pacific lines in 18H9 insured the speedy extermination 

 of the buffalo, the suppression of the Indian raider and the dawn of an 

 era of law, order, and peace. 



The Indian dozes on his reservation or works on irrigation dams, the 

 open range has gone, cowboy life has become tame ranching, irrigation 

 and dry farming are displacing bunch grass with alfalfa, kafir corn and 

 durum wheat. Through all the shifting scenes in the strange drama of the 

 steppe, aridity has been stage manager and will remain so to the end. 



The Pacific provinces are but a narrow fringe hemmed in between 

 the sea and the mountains beyond which desert and steppe begin abruptly. 



