302 CLIMA TIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 



with confident tread there is no retrograde march ; it is ever onward, life is sus- 

 tained and communities spring up and prosper. 



On the broad prairies beyond the Missouri, water is found in abundance, 

 either in rivers, streams, springs, spring-fed pools, or can be obtained by digging 

 wells at inconsiderable depths. In the important relations of this article, there- 

 fore, to human economy, the people of those regions need entertain no doubts 

 on the subject of a sufficient supply. This is an important consideration in dis- 

 cussing the possibilities of forest culture, and upon this fact and the power of the 

 soil of the plains to retain moisture, coupled with the supply beneath the surface, 

 into which the roots of the trees will send their delicate tubes and receive their 

 nourishment in part, is predicated the sneers met with already, and the assurance 

 of further operations in this direction. It is not an improbable theory that 

 beneath the area of the great plains there are considerable streams flowing east- 

 ward, at intervals, over their whole breadth, which, under certain aspects, serve 

 in the economy of the moisture of those regions. This was a favorite theme of 

 the late Professor J. W. Foster, LL. D., of Chicago.* I do not know whether 

 it was ever promulgated by him in any of his works, or only conceived after he 

 became too ill to write, but I recall a conversation with him, a short time before 

 his death, on the subject of the source of supply of the Great Lakes, in which he 

 thought that a possible answer might be found in subterranean streams whose 

 reservoirs were the excess of the precipitation in the mountain ranges of the far 

 West over the amount of the evaporation and that carried away by the visible 

 conduits of the region. 



As two confirmatory proofs of the plausibility of subterranean streams flow- 

 ing far to the east of the mountains, I offer the following facts, the first of which 

 came under my own observation, the second under that of a scientific friend : 

 Upon a high "divide" between the Smoky Hill and Saline rivers, in Western 

 Kansas, on the northern edge of the water-sheds of the canons of the Saline, the 

 Kansas Pacific railway company bored for water some years since, unsuccessfully, 

 after attaining a considerable depth ; this was in the fall. An examination of the 

 physical formation of the immediate locality partially explains the reason why 

 they failed to reach the veins running at the usual distance, thirty to sixty feet. 

 The bore was located upon the extreme limit of an inclined plane sloping south 

 to the Smoky Hill. On the northern rim of this plane the Saline has cut its chan- 

 nel more than three hundred feet below the level of the well's mouth ; on the 

 south the Smoky Hill flows over two hundred feet below at the foot of the slope, 

 seven miles away. The water courses of that district, both above and below the 

 surface flow to the south into the Smoky Hill, and not, as would superficially 

 appear most natural, into the Saline. Underneath the surface, at an average 

 depth of thirty feet, lies the shale, above which, but never in, all the water of the 

 wells is found. To the west and to the east the plane is cut down to the shale 

 beds by streams and canons which deprive this plane of its supply of water 



*President of the American Association for the Advancement of Scierce, Lecturer on Physical Geogra- 

 phy, Author of the Mississippi Valley, &c. 



