GEOLOGY OF LA SALLE COUNTY. 



159 



ans\Yer must be no. Man has no power to attract or 

 drive away rain, and all the fine stories told of the 

 iucreased rainfall in Western Kansas and Nebraska by 

 land speculators and railway land ag-ents are myths, as 

 too many have found to their cost. But man drains 

 swamps and sloughs, cuts down the forest and 

 prepares the way for a rainfall to rush to a creek 

 or river as fast as it falls, and, as a consequence, he has 

 disastrous fioods, low or dried up streams, and must 

 deepen his wells year b}^ year. ''As a man soweth so 

 shall he reap," and in nothing is this more true than 

 when he destroys the balance of the Creator's works. 



But other questions aside, we think it is clear that 

 La Salle county is rich in the possession of unusually 

 good and valuable water powers to the amount of not 

 less than 10,000 horse power for the Illinois, all of 

 which can be concentrated at Ottawa and Marseilles, 

 and 2,500 horse power for the Fox, a powder not ex- 

 celled, if it is equalled by that of any other count}^ in 

 the State, and yet b}" far the most of this from sloth 

 and want of enterprise, or from the grasping avarice 

 of those who own the sites that must be developed, is 

 to-day running to waste. No wonder Ottaw^a fails to 

 grow. A people whose g'reat object in life is to dance, 

 play cards and sing, is not at all likely to lead in great 

 and noble enterprises. Cards and songs do not build 

 dams or run machiner}^ or give the mechanic or arti- 

 san much to do. We need sturdier stuff than this to 

 push great enterprises and build cities. 



ARTESIAN WELLS. 



Some of the phenomena connected w^ith artesian 

 wells deserve notice. The late Judge J. D. Catou very 

 conclusively proved in a paper read before the Chi- 

 cago Academy of Sciences Jan. 13, 1874, and afterward 

 published in "The Past and Present of La Salle 



