188 ANNUAL REPORT 



overshadowing branches, the deepening soil, the falling leaves, 

 complete the process, and that particular ten acres of God's foot- 

 stool under the auspices of the congressional timber culture act, 

 stands forth redeemed, regenerated — an "oasis" in the desert. The 

 shadow of a "great rock in a weary land" is nowhere beside it. 

 It compels an involuntary tribute of admiration from the most 

 brutish soul. The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air seek 

 shelter and find solid comfort Within its hospitable area. The be- 

 lated, confused, weary, storm-buffeted traveler hails it as a sure land- 

 mark from which to take accurate bearings, and in times of ex- 

 ceeding peril a certain refuge and sometimes salvation from death 

 itself. In portions of Western Minnesota there was scarcely a 

 drop of rainfall last season from before harvest until the beginning 

 of winter, and not enough then to amount to anything. The un- 

 broken, uncultivated prairie seemed dried out, and except in 

 springy places, 



WHOLLY DESTITUTE OF MOISTURE. 



Even the sloughs, which in ordinary times are reservoirs of water, 

 were in some localities so thoroughly dried out that the ground 

 was cracked and split in all directions. Yet in the midst of this 

 seeming aridity the cultivated fields showed no signs of distress — 

 the summer-fallowed soil was moist to within an inch of the sur- 

 face, and in the young groves of four to six years' growth, the soil 

 was absolutely raoist — nearly wet from the surface down. Three 

 hundred miles further out west and north, on the line of the 

 Northern Pacific railway, the conditions were the same. They 

 had more rainfall out there in October and November than in 

 Western Minnesota, but all through August and September, the 

 season of harvesting and threshing, there was scarcely rain enough 

 to wet through a man's shirt sleeves — the uncultivated ground 

 was parched and dry. In backsetting the breaking, which had 

 been done in June for railroad tree planting, we brought up and 

 turned over from five to eight inches of soil that seemed as dry as 

 powder. Prairie fires were running in all directions; this all 

 through the month of August — yet at no time during the season 

 did our young trees grow more rapidly, or present a more healthy, 

 vigorous appearance, than during this season of drought. We had 

 some days out there, then, when it taxed the physical endurance 

 of men and teams to their utmost limits, and I can honestly record 

 it as a fact that our young trees out in Hazen's desert, on and 

 beyond the 100th meridian, that were planted the preceding May — 



