The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-05-13
DOES RACE Make CLIMATE,
Does the Anslo-Saxon Change the Gil
mate Where He Locatess

Does the Anglo-Saxon Change the Gil
mate Where He Locates:
From the Pittsburg Dispatch.
Twenty-three years ago / visited Fort
Riley, Kan. when the military reports re-
ferred to it as on the western border Of the
thickIy habitable region, and talked with
officers and traders CT Ellsworth, a little
beyond, as ION the edge of the great Ameri-
can desert" In the valleys there was soft
grass and q sort of sod. Northward and
1ortheastward-and / especially recall
Pawnee county, Nebraska-the country
was covered by the 'hard grass of the
nlains:n that is, a sort of punched and
seeded grass which formed no sod. Going
westward on the Platte found very little
sod beyond Loup Fork. The wonderful
change in all that meridian l know, for
have seen It
l have heard more curious things. for
which l cannot personally vouch. Many
witnesses say that for many years the border
between the soft grass of the Missouri valley
and the regular plains grass Travelled regu-
larry westward at the rate of two or three
miles per year. During all those years and
many more all Western New Mexico
and Northern Arizona were certainly
growing dryer, for found many
recently extinct lakes and abandoned
fields in which the Nayaioes
had raised good crops of corn thirty years
before. AT the same time the valleys about
Beaver, Utah, were gaining moisture so
rapidly that broad stretches remained green.
nearly all summer, and at Salt Lake City
there was at least one heavy rain each
month il the summer of 1874. Now what
could have caused this change except the
presence and work of the Caucasian? can
imagine no other reason which fits all tn
facts.
In Australia the changes have been
stupendous. Vast tracts on which the sum-
mer heat was almost intolerable have be-
come comparatively temperate. The air is
still hot, but there is a softness in it W 8ich
makes it far more agreeable; the nights
are more refreshing, the breezes more cool
ing, and in the vicinity of cultivated tracts
even the desert air is less Frustrating.
Old settlers in California insist
| know not how truly-that thun-
der is now often heard in localities where it
was unknown at the time of the ''diggings,n
and few pioneers testify to personally
noting the fright of Indians there when
they first heard thunder. The oldest
reports of explorers speak of the
Cherry creek country as rainless in
summer; but | have seen rain storms in
Denver which would be rated as violent
and protracted" even in the Obi valley
recent writer on Egypt asserts that rain
mas ldLeu OIIeuer since bno English TOOK
possession. On the other hand, the ruins of
Roman aqueducts and fountains and evil
dences of cultivated fields have been discov-
cred so far down in the Sahara as to prove
that the limit of cultivation was once far
south of the present limit, and we know in
reason that when Northern Africa had
eighty christian bishoprics it must have
held at least ten times as many people as
now. The Aryan or Caucasian race ruled
1t then. There are many reasons for be-
lieving that the habits of this race and their
methods of culture improve the climate
On the other hand, il is to be noted that
seasons of the old-fashioned kind come at
intervals to western Kansas and Nebraska
and to Utah and Colorado; and it is i'm
portant to know whether this is always to
be so, or whether long continued cultivation
will not finally make the increased rainfall
permanent. Nebraska presents this curious
anomaly: considerably more than half the
grain produced in the state is from the sec
ton west of what was only twenty-five years
ago marked as the limit of possible farming
without irrigation. 1t is also a question If
irrigating all the valleys lying in proper
locations therefor will not make all the ad-
jacent uplands cultivable by increasing the
rainfall