[21] 



or light cattle, cattle for the dairy, or cattle-breeding for beef— the districts 

 better adapted to sheep than any of the larger stock, — these eminently prac- 

 tical people have consulted the genius of each locality and devoted the land 

 to the purpose for which nature best fits it. It also shows that not only 

 private enterprise, but public money is actively at work developing the best 

 means of getting water onto the arid areas of that land, once thought im- 

 possible of use to civilization, as was the Great American desert of fifty 

 years ago. In doing this the example set by private enterprise in California 

 in sinking artesian wells, is not only encouraged by public recc^nition, but 

 the government engages in the same business when private capital and en- 

 terprise are insufficient, doing such work as was suggested by the writer in 

 a letter to Governor Moody and by him forwarded to Senator J. N. Dolph, 

 and by him submitted to the appropriate committee of the United States 

 senate. The committee included in an appropriation bill a liberal item to 

 test the artesian well system in Colorado and in Oregon, which was de- 

 feated, I think by nonconcurrence of the house of congress. 



The need of water on the vast body of the public domain yet in the 

 arid land states requires that means should be taken to approximately 

 measure the amount of water which does not flow of by the river system, 

 nor is yet accounted for by the ascertained evaporation. In this, common 

 observation teaches that people of eastern Oregon are very greatly inter- 

 ested, because, on account of the character of the surface formation, the 

 precipitation falling east of the summit ridge of the Cascade range seems 

 in larger measure to pass into the ground where it falls — and not on that 

 range and interior mountains merely, but over the great plain of the Co- 

 lumbia basin. The disappearance of snow from the surface, under the in- 

 fluence of the (Chinook), wind from the Pacific ocean, leaving the ground 

 dry in a few minutes, seems to the observer magical — turning in a few 

 hours of time the extensive arid lands of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and 

 western Montana from a snow covered condition distressful for the stock 

 owner to contemplate, into immediately usable pasture lands, yet showing 

 little efliect on the great river of the west — the Columbia — the floods of 

 which occur usually in June. 



Where does this precipitation lodge; and is it recoverable for uses in 

 agriculture and horticulture? are questions of more pressing Importance to 

 the people of Oregon at present than the opening of the unnecefisarlly large 

 Cascade forest reserve, on the eastern portion of which, pasturage being 

 permitted, the livestock interest can have the benefit untU a permanent 

 forest policy (should one be needed) can be adopted, which wiU minister to 

 the general welfare. I have endeavored to show that the privilege of graz- 

 ing the east side of the Cascode range and foothills is of the annual value 

 of $1 ,000,000. The entire value of the sheep and wool interest of the state 

 is shown in the Oregonian of January 1, 1898, to be as follows: — 



