The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1890-05-21
DOES RACE MAKE CLIMATE.
Does the AngIo-saxon Change the
Climate where he Locates,
Correspondence Of the Press.l


Correspondence Of the Press.1
NEW YORK, May 1Z-Twenty three
years ago I visited Fort Riley Kan
when the military reports referred 70 Il
as on the western border of the thickly
habitable region, and talked with officers
ana traders OF Ellsworth, little beyond,
as ION the edge of the Great American
Desert" In the valleys there was soft
grass and a sort of sod. NorthVard and
northeastward-and / especially recall
fawnee county, Neb.-the country was
covered by the "hard grass of the
PLAINS" that is, sort of punched and
seeded grass which formed no sod. Go.
ing westward on the Platte found very
little sod beyond Loup Fork. The won.
derful change In all that meridian ]
know, for have seen 1t.
have heard more curious things. for
which I cannot personally vouch. MANY
witnesses say that for many years the
border between the soft grass of the Mis-.
souri, valley and the regular plains grass
Travelled regularly westward at the rate
OF two or three miles per year. During
all those years and many more all west
ern New Mexico and northern Arizona
were certainly growing dryer, for I
found many recently extinct lakes and
abandoned fields in which the Navaioes
had raised good crops of corn thirty
years before. AT the same time the val
leys 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 in the summer of
1874. Now what could have caused this
change except the presence and work of
the Caucasiana I can imagine no other
reason which fits all the facts.
In Australia the changes have been
stupendous. Vast tracts on which the
summer heat was almost intolerable have
become comparatively temperate. The
air is still hot, but there is softness in
it which makes it far more agreeable; the
nights are more refreshing, the breezes
more cooling, and in the vicinity of cu1-
tivated tracts even the desert air is less
Frustrating. Old settlers in California
insist know not how truly-that thun.
it was unknown at the time of the "dig-
gings," and a few pioneers testify to per-
sonally noting the fright of Indians there
when they first heard thunder. The old
est reports of explorers speak of the
Cherry creek country as rainless in sum-
mer; but have seen rain storms in Dem
yer which would be rated as "violent
and protracted" even in the Ohio valley.
A recent writer on Egypt asserts that
rain has fallen oftener since the English
took possession. On the other hand, the
ruins of Roman aqueducts and fount-
tains and evidences of cultivated fields
have been discovered so far down in the
Sahara as to prove that the limit of Gull
tivation was once far south of the pres
ent limit, and we know in reason that
when Northern Africa had eighty Chris
tan bishoprics it must have held at least
ten times as many people as now. The
Aryan or Caucasian race ruled it then,
There are many reasons for believing
that the habits of this race and their
methods of culture improve the climate.
On the other hand it 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 important to know whether this is
always to be so, or whether long contin-
ued cultivation will not finally make the
increased rainfall permanent. Nebraska
presents this curious anomaly: consider
ably more than half the grain produced in
the state is from the section west of what
was only twenty-five years ago marked
as the limit of possible farming without
irrigation. 1t is also a question if irri-
eating all the valleys lying in proper
locations therefor wiz not make all the
adjacent uplands cultivable by increas-
ing the rainfall
T. r. r.