JO INFORMATtON FOR EMIGRANTS. 



Mr. James T. Mott, after seventeen years' residence in Iowa, says:* 



I have many times wondered how it could be that people were so 

 -■easily lost in these storms; why it was that a man in good health, 

 strong in limb, and well clothed, could not go a few yards from his 

 house to the barn to care for his stock, without danger of death ; why 

 whole sleigh-loads of people were frozen to death within a hundred rods 

 of dwellings, and this in the same location where I was living. But 

 lately it has been my fortune (or I thought at the time my misfortune) 

 to be caught in. one of these storms in Minnesota ; and it took only a 

 -short time for me to see through the whole thing. I felt the wind first 

 blowing softly from the south ; in thirty minutes it changed to a fierce 

 gale from the west, bringing with it a bank of snow that would com- 

 pare to the rush of water as the flood-gates are opened in a mill-race, 

 and with a force that no man or team could travel against it a mile, as 

 .steady as in a bellows run by machinery, being filled with snow as fine 

 as the finest dust, and so thick one could not see ten feet. The storm 

 lasted three days, . . . and the news is of hundreds dead ; people 

 frozen in stage-coaches, whole sleigh-loads returning home from town; 

 men standing dead with hand on stable-door latch ; others that saved 

 themselves by burrowing in snowbanks ; little children lost going home 

 from school; passengers in railroad cars two days without food, &c. . . 

 Mo7'-e people have frozefi to death in Northwest lozva and Western Minne- 

 .sota than wei^e ever murdered by Indians in those countries since their settle- 

 ment. . . . The people are now petitioning their Legislature for some 

 kind of protection from these storms ; asking that wire fences and storm- 

 houses be built along the traveled roads, asking them to do something 

 for their safety. I see none that would do but timber planting. 



The demands for timber in that region much exceed the supply. 

 The ravages of the grasshopper, the droughts, and severity of winter, 

 render it certain that there is slight hope that timber culture can remedy 

 the evils complained of. The winter just passed has been more severe 

 "than the one described above. 



The cost of growing the European larch, which is reckoned a tree of 

 ■easy growth, until it is eight years old, is placed at ^140 per acre.f 

 At this cost, we can hardly expect extensive tree culture in the West. 



So much for Iowa. To the west, in Nebraska and Dakota, the evils 

 -are more serious. Let us glance at the conditions of other States of the 

 Northwest. 



la Michigan: 



Facts are not wanting;]; to prove that changes in the climate had 

 already taken place. The winters within the last forty years have been 

 growing more severe The destruction of wheat, as well as 



*Io\va Horticultural Report, 1S72, page log. 

 tlowa Agricultural Reports, 1S70, page 328. 

 J Appendix to Report of Michigan Board of Agriculture, 1866. 



