Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio) 1856-1865, 1857-09-10
The Great Western Plains.

Coi. Galphln, VINO mas we'll explored ouI
great western plains, stretching from the
frontier of Kansas and the heart of Nebras-
ka to the Rocky Mountains, in letter to
the St. Louis Democrat, graphically sketch
es their characteristics. The Plains occu-
py longitudinal parallelogram of nearly
a 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 Missippi. They have slight
slope from the west to the east and abound
in rivers and streams which serve, like the
Nile, to irritate rather than drain the
neighboring surface, having few aff1uants
and running from west to east in shallow,
broad beds, through long, fiat narrow, ba-
sins. They are destitute of timber, even
single trees being scarce, though thick clad
with nutricious grasses and swarming with
animal life. Their soil is chiefly fine cal
careous mould, admirably adapted for pas
turage, and good farming arabic land is
found along the banks of the rivers.
Col. G. describes the climate to be, in
many respects, like Egypt, rainless favora-
bic to longevity, intellectual and social de-
velopment, and stimulative of high social
civilization. Storms are rare, except dur
ing the melting of snow upon the crest Of
the Rocky Mountains. These plains COM
monty regarded as deserts, unreclaimeda-
BILE, he declares swarm with animal life;
and he estimates the buffalo which find
their living upon them at twenty millions,
and other wild animals at more than fifty
millions, all of which subsist mainly upon
the gramma, or buffalo grass which the dry
atmosphere crisps into highly nutricious
hay. .---
A million of Indians have, until lately,
subsisted altogether upon the game which
they furnished, and they are capable of sus-
taining an immense pastoral population
Six-tenths of the food of the human fami-
ly, the Colonel thinks, is animal, the result
Of pastoral agriculture; and as the North
West is now the granery of the world, so
he maintains, will the Far West furnish
its supplies of animal food, consisting Of
meat, milk, butter, cheese, poultry, eggs,
wool and honey.
These plains without single abrupt
mountain, timbered space, desert or lake,
running soothly out to the navigable Mis-
souri,, Mississippi, and st. Lawrence, and
10 the Texan coast, not a portion of whose
sweep of surface is more than thousand
miles from the best navigation must become
the pastoral garden of the world.
They are everywhere adapted to sustain
great pastoral population. Adobe
bricks for dwellings, impervious to heat or
cold, can be made anywhere; plaster, lime,
clay, and sand, exist beneath nearly every
acre; bituminous coal is abundant, buffalo
dung is scattered everywhere, and wood
fuel is found plentifully by digging, for
the trees are stunted by the dry atmosphere
where the roots spread out in all directions.
Mr.. Galphin does not claim for these vast
plains the cardinal basis of the future en-
pire Of commerce and industry; but main
tains from their ample dimensions and po-
sitions, their climate, abundance Of fuel,
building material and animal life, that they
are not only adapted to the home of mil
lions Of happy freemeh, but that they will
be "the pasture field Of ths world"