The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-01-02

fine looking wheat stubble on high, rolling
land long after passing the first foot hills
Indicating the mountains; indeed, in many
places in Wyoming | looked upon pines
growing on the foot hills and upon wheat
stubble growing on the plains below them.
But this is very unusual Last year the
rainfall on the plains of Nebraska and
! Wyoming was as insignificant as during
/ the driest season of half a century ago.
/ Half the range cattle died during the win
! ter, not because the weather was particu-
! larry severe, but because there was no
grass. Old men in Wyoming told me that
the summer of 1890 was the driest they had
ever known. They also told me that forty
years ago there were wet seasons like the
past summer. There is no record of sage
brush along the Missouri river between
Kansas City and Omaha. | have never
known man who remembered the bunch
grass OF the plains in the same section of
the west. The tallest prairie grass l ever
saw is connected with recOllections of my
boyhood, and lived then within forty or
fifty miles of the Missouri river
The late census shows that many of the
western counties in Kansas and Nebraska
have lost population during the past ten
years, which means that there has been no
increase in the rainfall on the desert dur
ing that period. There have been great
changes in the desert in the last twenty
years, but there has been little perceptible
increase in the rainfall. I have no doubt
that there were wet summers fifty years
ago when wheat could have been grown on
the plains of Wyoming and Colorado with
oct Irrigation as was done this year, but
they do not seem to be any more frequent
now than then. In fact the last two de-
cades have shown lack of the usual
amount of rain. | was informed by old
cattlemen in the west that the herds have
fallen off two-thirds within fifteen or TWEEN
ty years; where you see one range COW
now you formerly saw three, which would
indicate less grass and less rain.
My business in the mountains was to hunt
with cattleman named B. b. Brooks,
with whom / had hunted on several other
occasions; once in company with Mr.. JUS
tice Brewer, now of the supreme court of
the United States. Mr.. Brewer went out
every day and rode hard, but he never
carried a gun; he was content with the
mountain scenery.
Brooks owns ranch twenty miles from
the railroad at Casper, Wy, where he has
one of the prettiest sights saw while away
was this green valley as l looked upon it
from the sage brush hills When / visited
the ranch three years ago l was much in
terested in lonely duck, which tried to
coax the chickens to play with it in the ir-
rigating bitches, but the chickens wouldn't
do it, so on my way home | sent out a big
drake to keep the duck company. The
ranch is overrIn with ducks now, and
there is talk of DISCRIMINATING them, as
was done with the hounds | sent out.
Brooks says that the hounds would chase
deer out of the country, paying no atten-
ton to blasts from the horn he learned to
play, returning in few days gaunt and
hungry, and looking as though they ex-
pected "a good deal of praise for hanging on
SO long.
Twenty miles south of the ranch, in the
Rattlesnake range of the Rocky noun
tains, Brooks had man named Billy Smith
living in tent to look after bunch of a
thousand cattle. We pitched another tent
beside his, and lived with him for twelve
days, making horseback excursions into
the surrounding country every morning
and returning at night. If Brooks and