300 CLIMA TIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 



hesitatingly within the mysterious domain spreading out almost inimitably before 

 him, he found that his prospective desert only needed the magic touch of the 

 genius of agriculture to convert it into a garden ; and so the hundreds of thous- 

 ands who have followed his footsteps here on the "iron trail," and with the speed 

 of the wind, are helping to build up that vast empire which is the destiny of that 

 portion of our country. 



"The plow has invaded the plains and has conquered," says my eloquent 

 friend Col. Elliott. At intervals for six hundred miles beyond the Missouri, 

 thriving villages have sprung up whose metropolitan aspect and rapid growth are 

 marvels of the nineteenth century. Around these centers of civilization, and 

 far beyond the ninety-eighth meridian too, under the munificent laws governing 

 the disposition of the public domain, the whole territory is rapidly being con- 

 verted into an agricultural region which promises the grandest results. Wherever 

 the rich sod of these magnificent natural fields is brought under the empire of 

 the plow, nearly every variety of vegetation which characterizes the primitive 

 prairie retreats like the original owners of the soil before the conquering tread of 

 the white man. 



Nature has furnished in these far-stretching plains almost every variety of 

 soil, but with a characteristic inherent fertility whose productiveness approaches, 

 under a true system of agriculture, the marvellous. 



Nowhere on the American continent does the opportunity for a diversified 

 agriculture present itself as on the prairies of the far-west. All the cereals can be 

 successfully grown on the rich bottom lands, or on the equally fertile elevated 

 divides which separate the valleys. 



Altitude above the sea level seems to enter largely into the problem of fruit 

 culture, and the possibilities in this direction are only limited to varieties as we 

 approach the more lofty plateaus westward. 



That the forest may be extended over the major portions of the great plains 

 in areas sufficiently large to effect the climatic changes which their presence in- 

 duces, is believed not only possible, but probable, if we can predicate from the 

 progress already made in this particular. Where the sun for centuries has poured 

 down his rays upon the carpet of short grass, or upon the brown and rusty earth; 

 where the rustling of leaves in the spring time is never heard, and where the 

 solitary smoke of the red man's wigwam oftentimes constituted the only cloud 

 in the whole expanse of the clear blue sky — man in his " hunger for the horizon," 

 as Senator Ingalls, of this State, so eloquently expressed the march of the hardy 

 yeomen of the Eastern slope who are pressing upon the foot-steps of the reced- 

 ing savage, will find the land now "full of harvests and green meadows," either 

 through the agency his presence exerts in changing the climate, or by a system 

 of irrigation his genius commands. 



Two-thirds of the length of the Great Plains, east and west, from far north 

 of the Platte, to their extreme southern border in Texas, is already productive, 

 as a tour through that region or reference to authentic statistics will confirm. I 

 have argued in the affirmative for the districts away to the mountain slopes which 



