46 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



No one may yet be able fully to explain the inter- 

 dependence of these two blessings ; but the fact re- 

 mains. All over " the Plains," there is evidence that 

 trees grew and flourished where none are now found, 

 and that springs and streams were then frequent and 

 abiding where none now exist. A prominent citizen 

 of Nevada, who explored southward from Austin to 

 the Colorado, assured me that his party traveled for 

 days in the bed of what had once been a considerable 

 river, but in which it was evident that no water had 

 flowed for years. And I have heard that, since the 

 Mormons have planted trees over considerable sec- 

 tions of Utah, rains in Summer are no longer rare, 

 and Salt Lake evinces, by a constant though moder- 

 ate increase of her volume of waters, that the equilib- 

 rium of rain-fall with evaporation in the Great 

 Basin has been fully restored or rather, that the 

 rain-fall is now taking the lead. 



I have a firm faith that all the great deserts of the 

 Temperate and Torrid Zones will yet be reclaimed 

 by irrigation and tfee-planting. The bill which Con- 

 gress did not pass, nor really consider, whereby it 

 was proposed, some years since, to give a section of 

 the woodless Public Lands remote from settlement to 

 every one who, in a separate township, would plant 

 and cherish a quarter-section of choice forest-trees, 

 ought to have been passed with modifications, per- 

 haps, but preserving the central idea. Had ten thous- 

 and quarter-sections, in so many different townships 

 of the Plains, been thus planted to timber ten to 



