The Nevada Democrat., 1857-10-21
Ths Great Ear Yeat.

We recently noticed, says the New Bedford
Mercury, in our columns the arrival Of steam
er at St Louis which had come down the Missou-
ri for 250O miles, having started at a point
where there was barely water enough to allow
her to turn, Col. Galphin passenger in this
steamer has communicated to the st. Louis
Democrat graphic account of the country
traversed by the great river and its branches,
from which account, as condensed, we take the
following:
The plains occupy longitudinal paralleIo-
gram of nearly thousand miles in width, and
extending from the Texas to the Arctic coast,
present an area equal to the twenty-four States
east of the Mississippi. They have slight
slope from the west to the east, and abound in
rivers and streams, which serve like the Nile.
to rrigate, rather than drain the neighboring
surface, having few shiuents, and running from
west to east, in shallow broad beds, throu Oh
long, fat, narrow basins They are destitute
Of timber, even single trees being scarce, though
thickly clad with nutricious grasses and swarm
ing with animal life. Their soil is chiefly fine,
calcarious mould, admirably adapted to pastur-
age and good arabic farming land is found
along the banks of the rivers.
Col. Galphin describes the climate to be in
many respects like Egypt, rainless, favorable to
longevity, intellectual and physical develop
ments and stimulative of high social civiliza-
ton. Storms are rare except during the melt
ing Of the snow upon the crest of the Rocky
Mountains. These plains, commonly regarded
as deserts irreclaimable, he declares, swarm
with animal life; and he estimates the buffalo,
which find their living upon them, at twenty
millions, all of which subsist mainly upon the
gramma, or buffalo grass, which the dry atmos-
phere crisps into highly nutricious hay.
A million of Indians have, until lately, sub
sisted altogether upon the game which they fur
nished, and they are capable of sustaining q
vast PASTORAL population. Six-tenths Of the
food Of the human family, the Colonel thinks,
is, CT ought to be animal, the result Of PASTORAL
agriculture; and as the northwest is now the
granary of the world, SO, he maintains, will the
Far West furnish its supplies of animal food,
consisting of meat, milk, butter, cheese, poul-
try, eggs wool and honey.
These plains, without single abrupt noun
tain, timbered space, dessert or lake, running
smoothly out to the navigable Missouri, Msss-
sppi and ST. Lawrence, and to the Texas coast,
not portion Of whose whole sweep of surface
is more than q thousand miles from the best nav
igation. must become the PASTORAL garden of
the world.
They are everywhere adapted to sustain a
great PASTORAL population. Adobe bricks for
dwellings, impervious to heat or cold, can be
made anywhere; plaster. lime. clay and sand ex-
list beneath nearly every acre ; bitumnous
coal is abundant, buffalo dung is scattered eve
rywhere and wood fuel is found plentifully by
digging for the trees are stunted by the dry at
mosphere, while the roots spread out in every
direction.
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 cl-
mate, abundance of fuel, building material and
animal life, that they are not only adapted to
the home of millions of happy freemen, but that
they will be ''the pasture field Of the world"