IMPOUNDING STORM WATERS. 



79 



The official records of Nebraska show 

 that in 1883 there was a good crop, with 

 fifty inches rainfall, while in 1889 there 

 was a big crop with only twenty-three inches 

 rainfall. The condition in Kansas affects 

 crops in Nebraska. A few can take good care 

 of themselves by local ditches, but, in 

 order to make this arid region furnish 

 comfortable homes for the millions of 

 homeless American citizens, the atmos- 

 pheric condition of the entire region must 

 be understood, and the tierce thirst of the 

 atmosphere prevented by dotting the plains 

 with ponds and lakes, and by burying the 

 wild and impervious buffalo sod with the 

 Indian and the buffalo. 



Our President and Congress and the 

 daily press are all wonderfully exercised 

 about a few barren acres in Venezuela and 

 are rushing with break-neck speed to quiet 

 the fears of people in Venezuela, but do 

 not seem to care if the isolated settlers in 

 arid America starve to death and the coun- 

 try becomes a howling, sandy desert. 



A large majority of the settlers in arid 

 America are men who spent the best years 

 of their lives in defense of our country. 



Congress encouraged them to settle on 

 the plains but now refuses to do anything 

 to make it possible for these settlers to live 

 upon the land for which they paid the 

 government millions of dollars. 



If Salisbury would send a modern 

 Stromburgh to run a line around arid 

 America and claim what our government 

 does not seem to care to develop, the natural 

 resource of this fertile region would then 

 be fully considered and appreciated and it 

 would receive the attention it deserves. 



Our government in conjunction with 

 States, counties and townships must do 

 one of two things, develop this arid coun- 

 try so that millions can have homes on 

 small farms, or allow our country to fill up 

 with troublesome and dangerous, homeless 

 people. 



The perpetuity of our free government 

 demands that everything possible be done 

 to encourage and aid our people to secure 

 homes. 



Twenty acres under intensive cultivation 

 will produce more than two townships now 

 do without irrigation in Western Ne- 

 braska. 



IMPOUNDING STORM WATERS. 



BY A. C. ROMIG. 



FOUR consecutive years of comparative 

 drought and crop shortage have aroused 

 the farmers of Central Kansas, as never 

 before, to a spirit of inquiry and. inven- 

 tion to discover some device by which like 

 casualties may be averted in the future. 



They are strongly and. favorably im- 

 pressed with Major Powell's suggestion of 

 impounded storm waters by a system of 

 storage reservoirs, catch basins, dams, and 

 ponds, not alone for the purpose of irriga- 

 tion, as he suggests, but for increased 

 humidity, evaporation, heavy dews, and 

 possible rainfall as well. 



It is a well-known meteorological fact 

 that clouds evaporated from the Pacific 

 Ocean are precipitated on the western 

 coast; in like manner, those of the Atlan- 

 tic are spilt out long before they reach the 

 center of the continent; that moisture 

 from the great lakes of the north, and the 



Gulf of Mexico on the south, seldom 

 reaches beyond one hundred miles west of 

 the Missouri State line, and that in all 

 the vast territory bounded by the Missouri 

 river, the Rocky Mountain range, British 

 America, and the Gulf of Mexico, there 

 are no inland seas nor large bodies of 

 water exposed to the sun's rays for evapo- 

 ration, hence the necessity of adopting 

 the only available substitute in sight. 



When the practice shall have become 

 general throughout the watershed regions 

 of the Missouri and Arkansas rivers, sup- 

 plemented by the underflow lifted to the 

 surface for the purpose of irrigation, as is 

 now being done in Western Kansas, and 

 if to this be added the additional supple- 

 ment of deep subsoiling, the problem of 

 relief and immunity from drought, hot 

 winds and crop shortage, will be effectually 

 and permanently solved. 



