CATTLE-GROWING OUT WEST. 27 



Mountains at 12,000. Vegetation ceases on the White 

 Mountains at 5000, on the Alleghanies at 5500, while 

 in the Black Hills of the West, at Sherman, at 8200 

 feet high vegetation is rank. Strawberries grow on the 

 tops of the mountains, and evergreen-trees flourish at an 

 elevation of 11,000 feet. There is little difference be- 

 tween the climate of the Plains and the Atlantic Coast. 

 The rainfall on the Plains has greatly increased of late 

 years, and the average is eighteen inches per annum, 

 divided as follows: spring, 8ffl$; summer, 5^^; 

 autumn, S-ffo inches. The snowfall is also about eigh- 

 teen inches. Later in this volume I shall present a 

 theory for the prevailing high winds on the Plains, and 

 also give letters from Sir Roderick Murchison and sev- 

 eral army officers relative to the cause of the mildness 

 of the climate in such a high latitude, but I have said 

 enough about the climate for the present, and sufficient, 

 I think, to convince any one that the Great American 

 Desert is not such a bad place to live, and indeed no 

 desert at all. 



