12 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



Between these last and swamps and bogs, every kind of transition 

 form is found. Fillmore, Clay, York, Hamilton, Franklin, Phillips 

 and Wayne Counties have a notable number of these old lake beds. 



Number of Nebraska Valleys. 



Nothing is more surprising to one who studies the relief forms 

 of the State than the amazing number of valleys or bottom lands. 

 Some writers have stated that there were several hundred. It would 

 have been more correct to have reported several thousand. Take 

 the region of the Republican as an example. On an average a 

 tributary valley comes into the main bottom from the north side 

 every two miles. Now as this river flows for two hundred miles 

 through the State, it would give one hundred for this section alone. 

 Counting, however, the streams that come in from the south side, 

 and those flowing into its larger tributaries, this number should be 

 multiplied by at least four, giving four hundred valleys great and 

 small for this region alone. Now add to these valleys those that 

 are tributary to the Platte, the Blues, the Nemahas, the Elkhorns, 

 the Logan, the Bows, the Missouri between its larger tributaries, 

 the Niobrara and the Loups, and it will increase the number to 

 thousands. It is true that many of them are narrow, ranging from 

 one fourth to a mile in width, but still they are valleys with living 

 or extinct stream beds in the middle or towards one side of them, 

 and having all the physical features of the larger river bottoms. 

 As already intimated there are a few minor valleys among the 

 smaller tributaries of the upper Elkhorns, Bazile, Loups, Niobra- 

 ra and Republican, in the stream beds of which the water no long- 

 er flows, but as will be shown further on many of them are regain- 

 ing, and all of them will in time, their former supply of water. 

 Thus can be seen why over the larger part of Nebraska the settler 

 can have his choice between bottom and upland. The great body 

 of these bottom lands, though composed of the richest mould and 

 modified alluvium and Loess materials are perfectly dry. It is true 

 that swamps are occasionally met with, but they occur at long in- 

 tervals and are the exception. 



No one can gain any idea of the number of these bottom lands by 

 looking at a map. Neither can they be found on the plats of the 

 government surveys, though in the latter they are more fully given 

 than in the former. In fact, counting in the small tributaries with 

 their narrow bottoms, not less than twenty-five per cent of the 



