STEEP TRAILS 



feet above the sea, the grain harvest is about 

 a month later than in California. In Reese 

 River Valley, six thousand feet, it begins near 

 the end of August. Winter grain ripens some 

 what earlier, while occasionally one meets a 

 patch of barley in some cool, high-lying canon 

 that will not mature before the middle of 

 September. 



Unlike California, Nevada will probably be 

 always richer in gold and silver than in grain. 

 Utah farmers hope to change the climate of 

 the east side of the basin by prayer, and point 

 to the recent rise in the waters of the Great 

 Salt Lake as a beginning of moister times. 

 But Nevada s only hope, in the way of any 

 considerable increase in agriculture, is from 

 artesian wells. The cleft and porous character 

 of the mountain rocks, tilted at every angle, 

 and the presence of springs bursting forth hi 

 the valleys far from the mountain sources, 

 indicate accumulations of water from the melt 

 ing snows that have escaped evaporation, 

 which, no doubt, may in many places now 

 barren be brought to the surface in flowing 

 wells. The experiment has been tried on a 

 small scale with encouraging success. But 

 what is now wanted seems to be the boring of 

 a few specimen wells of a large size out in the 

 main valleys. The encouragement that suc- 



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