Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1883-07-05
THE AMERICAN DESERT.


Now Turned Into the Great American Pas
ture Field.
The Great American Desert used
to figure in portentious letters on the
maps of the Biographies of our child
hood. 1t covered an area of about a
million and quarter square miles
west of the Missouri river, between
the Tooth meridian of longitude andthe
Sierra Nevada mountains. 1t extended
from Canada to Mexico and 1000 to
1,200 miles west of the Tooth merid-
ian. 1t was an unfathomable wilder
ness, inhabited only by savage men
and buffaloes, and bears, and was
looked upon as the Sahara Of our con-
tinent. Some of the foreign geogra-
piers still maintain that it exists; on
the same principle, we suppose, that
one of the most famous globe-makers
of London still puts Fort Dearborn at
the head of Lake Michigan, and knows
no ether division of the great West
than the Northwestern Territory.
But the desert has gone, and gone
forever. 1t is now known that the
antelope and the bison were the pre-
cursers Of a population that will, be-
fore the close of this century, over
spread all this vast tract with grazing
herds and focks. The mystery of the
tracAess wastes that once seemed SO
formidable has disappeared before the
| intrusion Of the locomotive. Wher-
ever streams are found and water can
be applied to the soil Of this desert, it
can be made to blossom like the gar
den of the Mormons at Salt Lake
City. Everywhere, whether irrigable
or not, it is covered with nutritious
grass on which the gazelle and buffalo
grow fat, and on which their success
ors, the sheep and the steer, will
thrive equally well.
The capabilities of this region have
been appreciated very, very slowly.
Ten years ago til movement to put
beef cattle and sheep on the "plains"
was in its infancy. Five years ago
the interest in this vast opening for
capital and labor first began to be keen,
and now it is intense from Texas to
Montana. Great joint-stock companies
are being formed all over this country
and in Europe to secure good ranges
and engage on an Abrahamic scale in
the patriarchial business Of furnishing
America and Britain with beef. Barb
wire fences hundreds of miles long are
being put around the choice grazing
grounds, and in but few years any
one who wants place to raise cattle
on large scale viii have to divide the
possessions Of some one who has pre-
ceded him.
All through this territory so admir-
ably adapted to the manufacture of
beefsteaks and mutton-chops there
are valleys with watercourses that will
permit Of an irrigation that will easily
feed the whole population engaged in
the pursuits of the miner, the cowboy
and the herier. Colorado raises the
very finest quality of wheat in limited
quantities, and there are many places
where the experiment Of the Latter
Day Saints will be successfully re-
peated. Every pound of meat, and
every found of offal, and every hide or
pelt produced by this territory has a
cash value in the markets. The
modern improvements of refrigerator
cars and quick transit will steadily
push backward the line of packing
houses and slaughter-houses that are
already beginning to move toward
Kansas City and Montana and with
them will grow up rendering estab-
lishments, and glue manufactures, and
the coarser kinds of timing. The
great American desert will quickly
assume the aspects of prosperity that
herds and flocks always bring with
them, and will support numerous
population in good, average American
style.
If it be true, as Edmund Burke said,
that nations breed at the mouth, there
are millions Of Europeans as well as
Americans who will owe their exist
ence to the expansion given by the
great desert to the means of human
substance.
The capacity of the great American
desert to grow beef, if estimated at the
low average of twenty steers per
square mile of area, will exceed twenty
millions of cattle. which would fur
nish four or five millions year for the
market. Think of what a food-sup-
plying and what a commerce these fig
ures comprisel Ne plains are the
great pasture-felds of the American
nation for all time to come.--C Chicago
Tribune.
Wise Mans Fortune.
You can't surmise
Ny great surprise