MURRAY AND NOBLES COUNTIES. 525 



Timber and prairie.] 



Moines river. They contain an abundance of fish, and their shores are amply supplied with wood 

 to admit the location of enviable farms. Hence we proceeded to the spot which I have desig- 

 nated on my map as the Great Oasis, and c tiled by ttie Sioux Ich^n-ptaye-tanka, translated by the 

 voyageurs la grande lisiere de hois the great skirt of wood" [at Hear lakes]. "This spot is a forest 

 of limited extent, composed of lime trees, swamp ash, prickly ash, white birch, beaver- wood, white 

 oak, etc., and surrounded by large lakes garnished wiih aquatic plants, swarming with muskrats, 

 covered at certain ssasons with wild fowl, ati'l ofifjrin? a safe protection against the annual firing of 

 the prairies. The usual depth of these lakes is from 7 to 12 feet; and the soil of the borders is found 

 well adapted to the cultivation of the potato, and the growth of culinary vegetables.'' 



Mr. John H. Low enumerates the following species of trees and shrubs 

 found in the woods of Bear lakes: bass, the most abundant tree, 40 to 60 

 feet high, American or white elm, also 40 to 60 feet high, and sometimes- 

 four or five feet in diameter, slippery or red elm, bur oak, white ash, wild 

 plum, willows, climbing bitter-sweet, black raspberry, choke-cherry, prickly 

 ash, black currant, and smooth gooseberry, common; the American aspen, 

 box-elder, cottonwood, hackberry, frost grape, smooth sumach, wolf-berry, 

 red raspberry, thorn, rose and sweet viburnum or sheep-berry, less com- 

 mon. 



Nobles county has less timber than Murray, its principal localities being only narrow groves 

 on the edge of the Graham lakes, of the Okabena lakes, of lake Ocheeda, and of Indian and State 

 Line lakes. 



Excepting these scanty tracts of wood, both Murray and Nobles counties are altogether 

 prairie, without tree or shrub, none sometimes being within view all around for several miles, 

 but universally covered by a beautiful mat of grass. This is ready for pasturage about the first 

 or the middle of May, and in summer would supply from a half to one ton of hay per acre. Most 

 of the hay gathered by the farmers, however, is from sloughs, which are wet in spring but in 

 summer are usually so hard that horses can be driven over them. Their growth of grass is more 

 than twice as heavy as that of the uplands, but of inferior quality, yielding from two to three 

 tons per acre. 



Owing to the scarcity of timber, and the difficulty in the present sparsely settled condition 

 of the country to provide either wood from the Big Woods of central Minnesota or coal from Iowa, 

 a large portion of the immigrants of these counties, probably half of all in southern Murray 

 county, and three-fourths of all in Nobles county, burn hay for their only fuel throughout the 

 year. A few have stoves to which the hay is supplied in a compressed mass, enclosed in a re- 

 movable fire-box; but mostly it is burned in common coal or wood stoves. The hay used is the 

 most rank growth of the sloughs, three to six feet long, consisting almost wholly of the fresh- 

 water cord-grass ( Spartina cynosuroides). Large* wisps of this are twisted, doubled and tied by 

 band, being thus brought into compact and convenient form for putting into the stove. One or 

 two of these twisted bunches are supplied every five or ten minutes, and they maintain a hot fire, 

 as serviceable as that of wood or coal. The amount of hay thus used in a year for heating an 

 ordinary room is from eight to twelve tons. An hour's time is sufficient for twisting up a winter 

 day's supply of this f^uel. With the more full settlement of this region, some systematic plan 

 may be adopted for securing wood or coal by freight in large amounts and therefore at much 

 lower cost than now, so that their expense will no longer prevent their general use. It also 

 seems quite practicable for farmers to raise all the fire-wood they need by setting out and culti- 

 vating ten acres, more or less, of timber. The white willow, cottonwood, soft maple and box- 

 elder are rapid-growing species which thrive well here when protected from the prairie fires. 

 Species should be selected which spring up, like the willows, by new shoots from the stump and 

 roots, when once cut down, so that the tract cut for one year's fuel may grow again and within a 

 few years yield as much more. Allowing an acre of willows for each year, apparently an ample 



