4 INFORMATION FOR EMIGRANTS. 



The efforts which were and are made to sell lands thus acquired, are- 

 familiar to the public. The fruitless, exhaustive struggle of the settler- 

 to produce something from the barren soil, his misery and destitution, 

 only those can know whose duties station them within the confines of 

 those worthless lands, and where they have the opportunities for per- 

 sonal observation 



My main proposition, that there can be no general agriculture along 

 the line of this road, is equally true of all that immense country lying be- 

 tween the ioo° meridian west longitude, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 

 the British Possessions, and Mexico. The comparative worthlessness of 

 this great tract of land is owing to the insufficient fall of rain. From 

 this general statement is to be excepted the very limited valleys that can: 

 be irrigated, and the beneficial effects of an occasional wet season. 



These facts have been incontrovertibly proven. They are recorded in' 

 the archives of the Government, with positive statistical evidence, and 

 this information, so well known to the intelligent people resident in thia. 

 middle region, has been gained by long experience 



By these calculations there has been given this region fifteen inches-. 

 of rain annually, and lines of equal heat running near this point, that 

 very nearly correspond with the observations of years past made at Fort. 

 Buford. Our reports at this post, which for eight years have been con- 

 tinuously and accurately kept, show an average of but 12.50 inches of 

 rain-fall, two and a half inches less than shown on the rain- chart. The 

 following is taken from the public records at the post, the upper hne of 

 figures showing the annual rain-fall, and the lower line the rain-fall of 

 the four growing months of Mav, June, July, and August for the same 

 years: 1867, «;i?; 1868, ^^f; 1869, ?;i^ ; 1870, ^i; 1871, |i; 1872, i^;??;- 

 1873, ^; 1874, |-i!, to August 1 1. 



The above is an exact copy taken from the records of the post. The. 

 actual rain for the last twelve months, ending November i, 1874, is 610^ 

 inches, less than a third of that of last year. 



It Avill be observed that only two years out of eight had a rain-fall 

 sufficient for agricultural purposes; yet the rain-fall of those two years,, 

 1872 and '73, were published broadcast in refutation of the statements, 

 of Gen. Hazen and other disinterested persons who had spoken truth of 

 this region. 



The following extract is from a letter of Gen. Sully, of the U. S. 

 Army, who was stationed in the country drained by the Upper Missouri^ 

 almost continuously from 1854 until 1870. He says: 



The country west of Minnesota, till you come to the Missouri, is- 

 decidedly bad — a high, dry, rolling prairie, unfit for cultivation, except 

 in a few very detached places. Alongside the very few springs in that 

 country there are several ponds and small lakes, but few of them contain 

 water that you can drink, and many of them dry up in summer ; there 

 is very little, in fact, you may say no timber in the country, and, as a 

 general rule, very little rain falls during the summer. The country' 

 might do for grazing, but cattle would be obliged to roam over large 

 sections of it^ and in winter would perish for want of timber or other* 



