Proceedings of the Farriers' Club. 563 



of tlie upper part of this valley, that is, through a distance of about 

 400 miles, requires irrigation, but the river has a fall of about fifteen 

 feet to the mile, and its waters can be carried out into the country 

 twenty miles on each side. There are many tributaries of this river, 

 with wide valleys, all of which can be irrigated, and I estimate that 

 a country equal to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 

 Yermont can be brought into cultivation and made to sustain an 

 immense population. One of these tributaries is the Iluerfeno, 650 

 miles from the Missouri, on which Col. Craig has a plantation of 

 2,500 acres, liowed from the ditches, which, in some places, run 

 around the side of the hills as much as 100 feet above the valley. 

 Col. Craig lives live miles from a neighbor, but he has an elegant 

 mansion, and he conducts farming on a large scale. 



To give you an idea of what the soil there is capable of producing, 

 I present a sample of the heads of timothy grass which Col. Craig 

 requested me to exhibit to this Club. The timothy must have been 

 as much as six feet high, and it is seen that the heads are from seven 

 to eight inches long. And yet, well as it grows, there is no use for it, 

 because the grass of the country is abundant, and because it is eaten 

 from the ground all winter. Tlie cactus grows here to an immense 

 size, and of course is covered with sharp spines, and therefore I must 

 be excused for not bringing a specimen. The soap plant, or Spanish 

 needle, grows abundantly ; the Mexican women use the root for soap, 

 and it is said also to be valuable for paper stock and for rope. The 

 sample I present is quite small. This package of soil I took from 

 Idaho, a town over forty miles west of Denver, and well in among 

 the Kocky mountains. A richer soil scarcely can be found in any 

 part of the country, and it is clear that it was derived from a decom- 

 position of the primitive rocks. 



Ifow, from all that I can see, and guided by Agassiz's tlieor}' of 

 glacial action, I am willing to believe that the soil of the great plains 

 and even of Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, are in a great measure 

 derived from the crushing down of the front ranks of the Rocky 

 mountains. That the rocks of these mountains have been ground up 

 in a most wonderful manner by some tremendous power, long in 

 action, is demonstrated by this specimen of glacial conglomerate, 

 which I obtained at Cherry Creek where gold was first discovered. 

 It is composed of pebbles so small as to be like fine gravel, which are 

 cemented together by a lime rock ground finer than they, and form- 

 ins: with sand and water a cement. I think we can understand from 



