The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-07-13
THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH.
Noble l.. Prentis in X. c. Star.

tally constructed at Larned. He haC
seen hundreds of miles Of Kansas whea
and corn; he had gazed for the first TIM
on that curiOus-looking machine,
header" in full operation; he haC
watched the clouds of black smoke rist
from the salt works at Hutchinson, bu
10 him this bit of salt water. blue a,
Penobscot bay, this seeming fragment Of
the Atlantic ocean dropped down in the
midst of what Mitchell's old atlas up
stairs displays as the Great American
Desert was the most wonderful sight yet
\ thousand miles from the nearest tide
water, it was yet the ocean brine, but by
some sort of Kansas chemical transfer
nation down down in the deep-delved
| earth, made soft as the water of the Ar
| kansas flowing few yards away, and
| by human labor and skill lifted into this
! basin for the comfort of man.
There has been deal of boring in the
| depths of the Kansas earth; a good deal
Of enterprise run into the ground as it
| were. Men have hunted down there for
coal and oil, and salt and gas, and often
er sunk their money with their drills
than otherwise; yet something has been
found out, and it is likely that for all
time the search will be continued. Just
as men will always search for Captain
Kids money, and for that Spanish gal
leon freighted with gold, reported sunk
in so many widely-sundered seas, off so
many coasts.
1t seems to me that the most precious
thing so far found or yet to be found in
Kansas Is water; ''the waters under the
earth" which formed third part of the
universe as man first wrote about it.
The Kansas sky and the Kansas soil are
open and known. But what exists I'M
der the earth, and what waters there
may be still remains to be known. The
little that is known but stimulates enter
prise and curiosity. Letting alone the
coal, and the oil, and the gas, in which
[ confess [ do not believe much, one
hundred miles from the Missouri line,
there is yet to be sought the ''waters
under the earth"
Ny own interest in the matter was
greatly reused by visit this week to
Meade county, a region which the al
most continuous travel of half dozen
years had not before embraced. There |
saw things that [ trust somebody who
thinks more to the practical purpose
than do viii investigate with the result
of saving knowledge.
1t was very dry down in that corner of
the state at the time of this visit. 1t
rained the night before at Hutchinson
and the next morning the sky was still
soft and misty and gray, and pools of
water stood in the bitches beside the rail
road track and in the corn rows, and for
forty or fifty miles everything was love
ly, for there never was another country
so beautitied by having its face washed
as Kansas. Then, as if the rain had
stopped by arrangement at marked
line, came the dry country. The clouds
gave way, scattered over the vast arch
of the sky by the fierce and intolerant
sun. The air was filled with dust that
might be felt but not seen, and to an i'm
mense distance, seemingly to the edge of |
the world. rolled in brown swells the
sunburned prairie, and on the verge
the silver spread, the tufted |
trees, the bays and inlets, the winding |
the airy cities by wide harbors |
of the false mirage. There was no use in
denying it; there was the old Kansas ter /
ror, the drouth. The wheat had grown |
before it came in all its destructiveness, |
but the oats and corn had been caught, |
and the hardy buffalo grass was brown |
furnace. 1t may be observed here that |
cheerful conversation about the climatic /
change" and the moving rain belt" |
may be INDUCED in when the clouds are
banking up in the sky and the breeze is
blowing as if from the sea, and the thun-
der is muttering in the nearer distance,
but on such bright old July day as that
under discussion not even the oldest in
labitant, who stayed by the country all
through the drOuth of go, has any met
observations to offer.
The lack of fields and other evidences
If settlement, the wide-opennesso Of a new
did not help any. The drouth
5 a calamity in a wilderness where no
nan is 1t was burden and grief to
he buffalo.
At Meade was a release from the train
md a meeting with friends; "diSfigured
)ut still in the ring putting up with
hese light Affections" certain that
t was but for moment:"
lied with that grim humOr which
nay be found in Kansas in the worst of
lines and exercising that Kansas hos
,itality which faileth not. They were
Had to show their country. and hence
his interview with the waters under
he earth"
In Kansas, it may be said, all over the
tate. there is a lower body of salt water.
which in some cases seems to have be
ONE rock salt. Deep borings in every
uarter of the state have reached this
rlne. under successive veins of fresh
water. In Meade county the order seems
o have been reversed and the salt water
laced on top. About a mile from town
: q sink as they would call it in Ten
eSsee or Kentucky, only the water Is
alt, and very salt. Here. in 1873. the
rdirie fell down onitSelf'' and revealed
his pool, and ever since the surrounding
arth has cracked and slowly sunk as if
he roof of the subterranean lake was
living way. Cattle men formerly pump !
d the water 10 the surface of the prairie :
nd let 1t run over the ground and evap-
rate To salt making a salt HEX" for
heir cattle, so that the ground Is bare
nd hard for large space about The
eep. yellow pool Is now only used as a
athing place. the water being as dense
: that ot the sea and Is salt The pool !
the Coney Island. the Long Branch, Z
ne Cape May of Meade county.
Where does the salt water come from:
ne pool running about the same depth !
j the year: \ good many people spec
late about that. but nobody knows.
Driving mile from the salt we'll with ;
: cracked and sun blistered and cattle /
'odden banks and YOU come in sight of |
low valley, as green as emerald. The l
rSt impulse Is 10 consider II a swampv q
lace, place where grown always the 5
at grass and the sword grass and the
thrush IN the pool" hut a moments re-
aCtlon assures you that the summer of Z
$50 Is not a swampy season in Meade {