The Great Falls leader. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1888-1900, 1889-09-01
can go back a few hundred yards and
find fine bench lands sloping off for miles
Inward tho ,no,u<o;re T.. .Al-,..

cau 20 pack lew hundred yards and
lind fine bench lands sloping off for miles
toward the mountains. In other places
the bad lands extend back three or four
miles, but the entire amount of territory
they occupy is relatively small. The
most Indifferent student of our country's
geology knows that the great glacial belt
the drift deposit of the guaternary age,
was made principally in the central
Mississippi valley, but the mesa, east of
the Rocky mountains, had had great
local glaciers depositing masses of drift,
which, though not as deep are deep
enough for the uses Of man in the ages
to come. t.,.,,
I have seen great boulders of lime
stones within two miles of Milk river
eight feet in diameter, which must nave
been carried many mites. Such stones
must have been carried by great glaciers,
and the drift deposits everywhere in
dictate it. There are large areas of bot
tom lands which can be successfully
cultivated year after year without
irrigation. There are large tracts of low
lying places around the mountains which
can and will be brought under cultiva-
ton. There is much brush land which
in the past two years has been covered
with a fine growth of native grasses, and
in this dry year they have grass on them
worth cutting.
There are many interesting problems
OF irrigation to be solved. Major
Powells able article on the subject in a
recent number of the North American
Review (the June number, l think) is a
better answer, though not written with
that object in view, to the writer of s'the
Milk River swindle'; than almost any
thing I can say in reply.
Whether or not this will be a great
agricultural district in years to come, or
how long it will be before large tracts
are plowed up, is subject on which it
is difficult to predict pro or con. But in
view of the giant strides made in the
past few years in the settlement of the
west, it certainly takes a man of consider
able temerity to rise up and proclaim a
section like this an uninhabited des ert.
Mr.. Wilkeson can at all events console
himself with the feeling that in the
strange attitude he has assumed, he is not
in bad company. What American read
er of Dickens can recall without resent
ment his violent attack on our own beau
tifully Mississippi valley. Dickens gen
ius enabled him to champion the cause
Of suffering humanity in almost every
phase, but 1t did not enable him to see
the grand future of the Mississippi coun-
try even so we'll as ,rAs fnresaen by La
Sale and other early explorers hundred
and fifty years before. He saw a few
people leading lives of isolation and hard
ship which would be torture to him. Blu
he was All Englishman and we can for
give him more readily than if he had
been an American.
| l will not endeavor to prove in this ar
ticle that this is a great country for agri-
culture, but do assert, unreservedly, that
the Milk river basin Is a magnificent stool
country and the belief is formed from ar
intimate knowledge of the section that i
will.in time support a large population
through its agricultural resources.
will share in the future of the new stat
of Montana, which, this year devastated
, by great fires and great drouths, has al
, the varied resources which make grea
: people and great commonwealth ant
, it will be little affected one way or an
} other by the publications of sensations
writer's who over-praise or under prais