42 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



were they, are again supplied with water, not merely during part 

 of the year, but apparently permanently. 



Still another fact in the same connection is the increasing size of 

 the streams of the State. Old settlers observe this. It is a phe- 

 nomenon that every old settler must notice, who has been inter- 

 ested in matters of this kind. 



The changing vegetation of the State proves the same fact. 

 There was a time within the memory of many now living when 

 the buffalo grass was the most conspicuous vegetable form west of 

 the Missouri. When Lewis and Clarke passed up the Missouri in 

 1804, it was almost the only grass that they found growing along 

 this portion of their route. Fremont observed the same thing as 

 late as 1842. The first settlers in this territory found it abounding 

 along all the river counties. The early freighters across the plains 

 depended most on it for pasturage for their cattle. Now how 

 changed. It has almost entirely disappeared for two hundred 

 miles west of the Missouri. There is comparatively little of it now 

 on the third hundred. Every year it is retreating further west- 

 ward. Its place is supplied with grasses indigenous to moister 

 climates. Where formerly the ground was covered with grasses 

 from two to four inches high, there is now a carpet of green from 

 six inches to four feet high. Many of the blue joints and sorghum 

 grasses exceed even this height. Still other forms besides the 

 grasses, characteristic of moist regions, are occupying the spaces 

 left by the retreating buffalo grass. There is also an increase in 

 the spontaneous growth of timber. Wherever there are abandoned 

 cultivated fields, and the prairie fires are kept away, and the tract 

 is left unmolested from other hindering causes, thick growths of 

 cottonwood and sometimes box elder frequently, soon monopolize 

 the ground. This is especially true of lands in close proximity to 

 existing timber belts. There is an increasing disposition to do this 

 all over eastern Nebraska. Where formerly there was not suffi- 

 cient moisture to start the seeds into life on the high lands, which 

 are scattered each year by the winds, birds and rodents, there is 

 an abundance. In fact it is questionable, if prairie fires were en- 

 tirely repressed, whether groves of timber would not now gradu- 

 ally creep over all the unoccupied lands of Nebraska. The proofs, 

 therefore, that the rainfall of Nebraska is steadily increasing, are 

 manifold. If space permitted, many more could be given. It is 

 therefore probable that the early explorers of this region were cor- 



