Year: 1869

july y, 1869.


The character of the interior plains
and the basin of the Rocky Mountains
can not be fully described or under
stood without much more extensive
knowledge of the exact sciences than is
possessed either by the general reader
or ordinary correspondent. The desert
character of the region upon which we
enter soon after leaving Laramie, for
the west, is mainly due to three causes
drought, elevation, and an excess of
aIkali in the soil. At my first visit to
Fort Steele, about year ago, the sea-
son had been exceedingly dry, and the
entire region was covered with alIlali
dust to the depth of several inches.-
Leaving Laramie, the road continues for
several miles in a country Of nearly aV-
erage fertility, showing on the western
side of this plain the characteristics of
this desert.


At Rock Creek telegraph station, 624
miles west of Omaha, and at the eX-
treme western slope of the Black Hills,
we mark the western boundary of all
fertile land, and enter fairly upon The
Desert'-a desert which is no alytb. For
nearly four hundred miles the. whole
country seems utterly barren. Occa-
sionally patches of green in the narrow
valley Of some creek or slope of some
mountain hollow, please the eye, but
everywhere over the plain the same
dreary features of rock and sage brush
alternate with bare gray earth and
white strips Ofalkali. The land is near
ly all too high for irrigation, if it were
ever so fertile; and even where it could
be watered SO impregnated with alkali
that all the water In the sweet heavens
or multitudiOus seas would never wash
it pure or make it fertile. From Rock
Creek to Weber Canon silence and desc
latiOn reign, varied only at rare inter-
walls by the chiTp of a cricket, the bark
of a coyote, or the melancholy scream
of the sage-hen. Six hundred and nine
ty-five miles from Omaha we cross the
North Platte for the last time, four hun
dred and five miles from where we left
it in Nebraska, and two miles further
Oh pass the old site of Benton City now
reduced to a sectiOn-hOuse and telegraph
station.


Of all the "mushroon cities" on the
line of this road, none have so utterly
vanished. When l first reached Ben
ton, early in August of last year, it was
the Great City of the Plains, the freight
and passenger terminus of the Union
Pacific, the point of outfit and supply
for all points west of the Black Hills,
and a flourishing city of several thOus-
and inhabitants. Day after day her
streets were crowded with q motley
thrOng of MeXicans, herders, teamsters,
soldiers, and railway employees, and
night after night the sound of music and
reveIry was borne upon the evening air
from q scOreOf danCe-hOusesand concert
saloons. Single firms, whose entire
stock on hand at one time was stored in
a twenty-by-siXtyf frame tent, did busi-
ness of $4,000 per month. During the
two weeks that / made my stopping
place at the tent Of e. Block q Co.,
wholesale liquor and cigar dealers, that
firm sold to freighters over So, 900 worth
of goods. Money seemed to flow like
water; the floors of the dance-hOuses
were covered from dark till nearly day
light, one set crowding another Off the
floor, at tone dollar set, and whisky
inclUded,u and tens of thousands chang
ed hands in a single night in the gam
bling tent,