. . . [W]e will consider next the present physical condition and future economy or productive ability of that vast western region of the United States being and lying west of the 100th meridian.

To some, a discussion of this topic in a space so limited may seem objectionable, but the questions involved relate so directly to western Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado, that in presenting it we yield to a public demand, more especially urgent from the conflicting views now entertained in regard to the future status of our vast public domain.

I have selected from Gen. Hazen’s article in the North American Review, 1878,^[1] a few extracts, as best representing the American desert literature, for which there seems to be a demand or craving, especially in eastern circles, for a reason similar to that which calls for stimulants, and which is proof of a vitiated taste instead of a healthy condition. Gen. Hazen, like many Army officers, had preconceived the Great West as a desert—a decision not to be overcome or set aside by any number of farms or amount of farm products. . . .

In the summer of 1869 or 1870, during the first construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway, I saw at a water station in western Kansas, not far from the Colorado line, on the 102nd meridian, a tall stalk of growing corn. It was doubtless chance sown from a grain car, but regardless of propriety or proper paternity, there it was, a live stalk of corn, like a miniature palm, growing in that desert soil, its broad leaves rustling in the wind with as much assurance of vigorous growth as if in Illinois or Iowa. It had two ears whose silk tips beneath the tall tassel or plume indicated that it would have its career according to the rule, “first the blade, then the ear, then the corn in the ear.”

The eastern excursionists on the same train, who had, in terms that denoted more strength than politeness, disposed of the whole region as worthless—an eternal desert, etc., saw in this apparition an argument that kept them silent, especially on the subject of soil and corn raining; but the exciting buffalo hunt doubtless dissipated the impression it should have made. But on the testimony of this living witness I took an appeal from the decision of Fremont^[2] and Hazen, preferring to trust my eyes and believe what I saw rather than the hasty and sweeping conclusion of a prejudiced martinet.^[3]

Beside this stalwart stalk of corn also grew a huge Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense). Soon after our arrival Little Raven the Cheyenne chief,^[4] came to the station with a pony train of buffalo skin to exchange as usual for firewater, tobacco, powder, and guns, especially the latter because most needed in their favorite pastime of scalping the unwary white man. Comparing the corn and thistle growing side by side, one could not resist a preference “for the survival of the fittest,”^[5] nor see any harm in the destruction of the entire tribe of thistles. Useless, like the thistle, it was clear that the Indian had no stronger claim. To civilize him and to make the thistle bear figs are similar tasks, which may properly occupy the minds of Utopian dreamers.

The soil of the extreme western counties of Nebraska, Dundy, Chase, and Hitchcock, on the 101st and 102nd meridians, is the same by analysis as the soil of Saline, Gage, Richardson, and Johnson Counties, in southern Nebraska.^[6] For hundreds of miles we find an unvarying top soil of loess^[7] two to five feet deep, slightly colored with burnt or decayed vegetation, with a subsoil identical in composition, but having its original light brownish-yellow hues. It is sometimes called the “bluff formation,” because first noticed in the vast line of bluffs on the Missouri River. But since it has been proved by Professor Aughey^[8] to be identical with the loess or rich soil of the Rhine Valley in Germany, named loess, this name is coming into general use. The same soil extends over a large area also in China, where a dense population exists. Next to the deposits of China in size are these deposits. In Nebraska they occupy the entire state, as well as the northern portion of Arkansas. The northwestern portion of Nebraska, or the Niobrara region, as far as explored by competent observers, has the same soils, viz., the loess. It is however, in hilly regions, on the great divides, characterized by ridges or hills, which having the appearance of sand, were formerly supposed to be sand-hills or dunes. They are, on the contrary, merely areas of loess, as capable of grass and grain growing as the adjacent regions. Of the forty-nine millions of acres of Nebraska, I would not deduct over four million acres of the northwestern potion as nonproductive. This is a small ratio, compared to the nonarable regions of the eastern or middle states, where, over vast areas scarcely one acre in ten can be cultivated.

Of fifty letters and affidavits from farmers who have prosperous farms and homes on and beyond the 100th meridian, I give you one dated Lyndon, Neb., Aug. 26, 1878, . . .

The crop surface on the western border of settlements for 1879, extending north and south through Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, made a strip or belt ten miles wide and one thousand miles in length. During all the previous years and ages only sparse grass, in tufts or patches, has partially covered the ground, but now the new carpet of green, growing crops, for the first time wholly overspreads and shields the earth from the sun’s heat. The earth cannot be heated as before, and is less able to heat the air above it, and the air is, therefore, less able to contain its moisture. This being the fact over the entire area of growing crops, there must result a vast diminution of heat compared with former years. In other words, the crop surface, from sprouting to ripening—a period of four to six months—is a condensing surface, and will cause an increase of rainfall all along the line of farms from north to south, increasing in amount until the average measure of precipitation is reached. Every year will show the work of a large army of pioneer farmers, who, armed with the plow, will overturn and conquer a wide belt of the wild prairie desert, thus preparing the way for a still further advance in rainfall.

In these new states and territories the experience of farmers proves the following results:

1. The regular increase of precipitation, in periods of years, westward from the Missouri River.

2. The ratio of increase bears a direct ratio to the steady increase of farming and cropping.

3. The relation here stated is that of cause and effect. In other words, rain follows the plow. Across the states of Nebraska and Kansas, from east to west, over 300 miles, the plow has advanced in spite of prophetic starvation. The first settlers, twenty-five years ago, placed the desert limits just west of the Missouri River counties. These being occupied the desert line was established on the Big Blue,^[9] seventymiles beyond. But the farmer invaded the Big Blue Valley, and the desert line was established near Kearney, 190 miles west of Omaha. But the irrepressible plow broke the barrier in so many places that the desert-makers fled with their line to the 100th meridian, determined to have and enjoy a desert. Both hordes of farmers have gone far beyond and secured farms whose products equal those of Iowa or Illinois.

There being really no reliable line or meridian which can be named as the boundary of our mythical American desert, I do not hesitate to say that it will never be found. There is no desert, neither is there any foundation in fact for the terms “nonfarming,” “nonirrigable,” and “pasturage lands.” These flimsy barriers have been interposed by wiseacres, kid-gloved experts and closet philosophers, but the farmer with his plow tears them asunder, leaving us to remember the experts only as charlatans or quacks. . . .