Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1857-07-29
NO. XXXy.
The Great Western Plains.

| The recent steamboat arrivals at St. Louis
from Upper Missouri, give some idea OF the vast
extent of country drained by that mighty river
and is tributaries. One boat started where the
river was narrowed down to only sufficient width
to allow al ascending boat to wind in order to
change its direction, and then followed down
the broadening stream for $500 miles until it
mingles its muddy waters with the MisslssppL
and In sufficient volume to give color and char
acter to that great artery of the continent, even
when by many modths it is swallowed in the
Gulf.
Colonel Galphin. who has well explored our
Great Western Plains, stretching from the from
tier of Kansas and the heart Of Nebraska to the
Rocky Mountains in letter to tie St. Louis
Democrat graphically sketches their character
istics. The Plains occupy longitudinal paral.
telegram of nearly thousand miles in width,
and extending from the Texan to the Artic
coast, present an area equal to the twenty-fOur
States east of the Mississippi. They have q
slight slope from the west to the east, aud a.
bound in rivers and streams. which serve, like
the Nile, to irrgate rather than drain the neigh
boring surface, having few afiuents, and run
ming from west TO east in shallow, broad beds,
through long, fit, narrow basins. They are
destitute of timbereven single trees being scarce,
though thickly clad with nutritious grasses, and
swarIning with animal life Their soil is chief.
ly fine calcareous mould, admirably adapted
for pasturage and good farming arabic land is
found along the banks Of the rivers.
Colonel Galphin describes the climate to be,
in many respects, like Egypt, rainless, favorable
to longevity, intellectual and physical deyelope-
rnent, and stimulative of high social civiliza-
ton. Storms are rare, except during the melt
ing of snow upon the crest OF the Rocky Noun
tains. These plains, commonly regarded as de-
serts, rreclaimable, he declares swarm with an
imal life and he estimates the Buffalo which
find their living upon them at twenty millions,
and other wild animals at more than fifty mil
lions, all of which subsist mainly upon the gram.
ma or buffalo grass which the dry atmosphere
Grips into highly nutricious hay. A million OF
Indians have, until lately, subsisted altogether
upon the game which they furnished, and they
are capable OF sustaining an immense pastoral
population. Six tenths of the food of the hu-
man family, the Col. thinks, is, or ought to be,
animal, the result of pastoral agriculture, and
rs the Northwest is now the granary of the
world 80, he maintains, will the Far West, fur.
nish its supplies of animal food, consisting OF
meat, milk, butter, cheese, poultry, eggs, wool
and honey.
These plains without single abrupt noun
tain, timbered space, desert or lake, running
smoothly out to the navgable Missouri, Missis-
spp and St. Lawrence and to the Texan coast,
not portion of whose whole sweep ofsurface is
more than thousand miles from the best nav-
CATION, must become the pastoral garden OF the
world.
They are everywhere adapted to sustain q
great pastoral population. Adobe bricks for
dwellings impervious to heat or cold, can be
made anywhere; plaster, lime. clay and sand,
exists beneath every acre; bituminous coal is
in abundance, buffalo dung is scattered every
where, and wood fuel is found plentifully by
digging, for the trees are stunted by the dry at
mosphere, while the roots spread out in all di-
rections.
Mr.. Galphin does not claim for these vast
plains the cardinal basis of the future empire of
commerce and industry; but maintains, from
their ample dimensions and positions, their eli
mate, abundance of fuel, building material and
animal life that they are not only adapted to be
the home of millions of happy freemen, but that
they will be ''the pasture field of the world"