CHAPTER IV 

 SUNSHINE FARMING 



THE first map of the United States 

 which I ever studied represented 

 nearly the entire region between the Mis- 

 souri and the Rocky Mountain crest as the 

 Great American Desert. It is wonderful 

 how the influence of the old map endures. 

 Many of our countrymen still seem to think 

 of west Kansas and Nebraska and eastern 

 Colorado as one vast sandbank. Certain it 

 is that multitudes regard this tract as now, 

 henceforth and evermore, just a great ox- 

 pasture, not a dead waste like Sahara, worth 

 mentioning as part of our country's domain, 

 good hunting-ground and helpful in keep- 

 ing down the price of beef, but destined 

 never to become a land of homes. 



Of late a few, more enlightened, so far 

 modify this view as to admit that some part 

 of what was once accounted desert will be 

 brought under culture by means of irriga- 

 tion. Even such usually take no account of 



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