GRASS LANDS IN IDAHO 261 



stricken desert, of Idaho on either side of winding Snake River. 

 Thereon sit many villages, towns and even cities, while long lines of 

 towering poplars reach up to proclaim the tale of a land made glad. 

 And yet, curiously enough, the land smiled doubtfully at first when 

 water was turned on. Wheat made only about 20 bushels to the 

 acre, potatoes no more than 100 bushels. These rewards, ample 

 enough in Ohio or Pennsylvania, were quite inadequate in the far 

 off desert. Men freely predicted that it was a mistake settling the 

 desert plain, that the millions of dollars thrown into the river and 

 its canals would be forever sunken and lost, that the land was too 

 poor to make farming profitable. Chemists examined the soil and 

 learned that it was rich in phosphorus, rich in potash, made indeed 

 from volcanic ash and decayed lava rocks, but that it had in it little 

 nitrogen. Now nitrogen is the life of soils, the quickening wine 

 that invigorates plants. 



"Nitrogen is the essential element in protein. Soils nearly every- 

 where are starving for nitrogen, so are the world's poor, both man 

 and beast. Nitrogen comes from the deserts of Chili, from blood 

 of beast, a little from nitrogen factories in Norway where the 

 electric furnaces take apart the air and make captive that elusive 

 element. So these farmers on Idaho's plains could have brought 

 nitrate of soda from South America or bought dried blood from 

 Chicago, only that the crops harvested would not have repaid that 

 price and the great length of travel. Clearly the land was doomed 

 and the settlers thereof to poverty and unprofitable toil, unless 

 some home source of nitrogen could be found. Not that the farmers 

 themselves knew clearly what was wrong, to them it was only that 

 'The derned land is poor.' Whether it had lack of phosphorus, 

 potash, nitrogen or what not, they knew not. 



"There was another curious thing about that soil that we have not 

 considered; it had in it four percent of carbonate of lime. That is 

 a most extraordinary amount of lime for an American soil, its origin 

 from volcanic ash, from decayed lava rock gave it the lime. Soils 

 of Maryland or New York have in them usually not one-tenth 

 that much lime, maybe not one-fiftieth as much. When wheat did 

 not seem profitable or potatoes, some sowed alfalfa. The alfalfa 

 grew gloriously after a time. At first it sometimes failed to 

 grow well, but presently some miracle happened and it grew like 

 Jonah's gourd. That was when bacteria got to work. Men cut it 

 three or four times during the summer and harvested as much ap 



