Connecticut western news., 1883-10-03
IN A WESTERN DESERT.
What a German Farmer has Done Out in
 Washington Territory.

Probably the most forlorn, hopeless- looking place for the agriculturist on the whole line of the railroad is Ainsworth, on the Snake river, in the southeastern part of Washington Territory. The town is an unthrifty collection of unpainted shanties. The population largely con- sists of stranded roughs, harlots, China men, and hogs. The decent people you meet are overanxious to have you under stand that they do not belong to Aims l worth. One of the first men I en- I countered on the street was Chinaman | with his throat half cut. He was look ing for the sheriff. The streets are a mixture of dust and sand, ankle deep except where they are paved with old playing cards and broken whisky bot ties. In every direction from the little settlement stretch for miles dreary plains of the same mixture of dust and sand, covered with sage bushes. Every thing is dry except the river. That rushes along past the town as though it were ashamed to stay in such company. It was the 10th day of September when we were in Ainsworth. There had not i been drop of rain since the beginning of May.
 speak particularly of Ainsworth, be- cause, as has been said, there is not a spot between Fargo and Portland which in appearance is less inviting to the farmer. The outlook is simply dis heartening. The town is railroad set clement, owing it's existence to the fact that 8 big bridge is building over the Snake river at that point.
 A year or two ago it occurred to a German blacksmith named Schunemann, who had found it hard to support his wife and children at the East, that this Sahara, tufted with sage brush, might not be so bad as it looked. He took up 8 quarter section of sage and sand, and bought some adjoining land of the same sort from the railroad company, paying the lowest price on the schedule, $2.6C an acre. Then he began to try to raise crops without artificial irrigation.
 "What did people say?' remarked Schunemann, cutting as good water melon as is often sold in Washington Market. '"They said was fool"
 Out of the sand, stripped of its sage brush, MT. Schunemann has raised wheat, forty bushels to the acre, or three times the average acre yield of the whole country, and two-thirds of the yield of the crack land in the Gallatin valley. He has raised oats, barley, mil, let, and rye, all of excellent quality, and in remunerative quantities. He exhibits pumpkins, squashes, beets, carrots, and potatoes, these vegetables being larger and fuller than their kinds as we have been accustomed to see them and eat them at the East. His corn fourishes, especially some of the dented varieties. His tomatoes are creditable. He has planted fruit trees, apple, pear, and peach, and they are doing well, but are too young to bear. The same may be said of the small fruits, the raspberries and blackberries. His melons are first. rate in flavor; young neighbor of his, practical farmer from Wisconsin, who followed the pioneer into the Ainsworth desert, told me that he had sold foul hundred dollars worth of watermelons this season.
 MT. Schunemann believes that he car add grapes to the long list of products which he cultivates with profit; ill fact he believes that anything will grow il the sage brush desert. He dugs a vel and struck water at twenty-eig feet but does not irrigate his fields.
 "Where does the moisture come from ?" he was asked.
 'I don't know" said he, unless i rains up on the roots from unde1 ground"
 All this has been done ill almost rain less seasons, on parallel Forty-six, thu latitude of Moosehead Lake and Mon treal, without artificial irrigation, ano in soil which thousands of the needles emigrants had passed over with scorn Schunemann's is a single case, and it i not mentioned as typical; but the plucl of the man, the absence of any ything o1 his part like desire to "boom tn country" and the contrast between tn prospects and results of his experimen struck me as remarkable. Yo7, Sun.
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