IRRIGATION IN NEBRASKA. 



A line drawn in a southwesterly direction across the state of 

 "Nebraska from the northeast corner of Knox county to the southwest 

 corner of Purnas county, traverses approximately the medial line of a 

 belt receiving an average mean rainfall of about twenty-four inches 

 per annum. To the east of this belt the precipitation is greater, while 

 to the west it decreases in a regular ratio. The line above referred to 

 may be accepted also as the line of demarkation between the humid 

 and the semi-humid portions of the State, The humid region of 

 Nebraska, as thus defined, comprising about 32,000 square miles of 

 territory, contains a million inhabitants, and is unexcelled in agricul- 

 tural resources as compared with any other State in the Union. Its 

 soil is fertile to a degree; every cereal and other product known to the 

 temperate zone can be cultivated here with the assurance of a harvest 

 as abundant and certain as that which befalls any other region of the 

 ivorld of the same latitude. Tf Nebraska only included its humid 

 counties alone it would still be a great State, exceeding in area West 

 Virginia, Maine or South Carolina; it would contain four times as many 

 square miles as the state of Massachusetts, and its extent would be 

 but one-fifth less than that of Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, or of all the 

 New England States combined. 



But Nebraska is all this and more. To the west of the line above 

 mentioned are 44,000 square m\les of magnificent prairie lands, car 

 peted with grasses that render this section one of the finest stock 

 ranges of the great West. With the exception of about 15,000 square 

 miles, which compose the sand hill areas of this part of the State, the 

 fertility of the soil is as great as that of the lands just west of the 

 Missouri river, and in years of plentiful rainfall the crops produced in 

 this region have been the envy of the farmers of the humid section of 

 the State. While the climate of this portion of Nebraska is delightful, 

 the rainfall is uncertain, and for this reason the settlement of the 

 buffalo grassed table lands lying between the Platte and the Repub- 

 lican rivers has been the source of disappointment and misfortune to 

 those who were lured thither by the smiling prospects of the dark 

 green prairies in June. But experience alone is the great teacher of 

 the limitations and possibilities of development in the unpopulated 

 regions of the new world, and so it came that a hundred and fifty 

 thousand people found themselves located in the semi-humid portion of 

 Nebraska before it became notoriously evident that the uncertainty of 

 rainfall in that part of the state renders agriculture, as a pursuit, un- 

 jcertain and hence unrenumerative. 



