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Show TWO YEARS OF CHANGE. 123 on which water can be brought from the mountains for irrigation, or still more rarely a green plat in some corner of the mountains where there is an unusual amount of rain, or percolation of moisture from above, constitute the cultivable lands; all the rest is rugged mount-ain, rocky flat, gravel bed, barren ridge scantily clothed with sage-brush, greasewood or bunch- grass, or complete desert the last cover-ing at least one- third of the entire region. The reasons for this sterility are many : Elevation and consequent cold ; drought caused by the trend of the bordering mountains and direction of the prevailing winds ; rock in all forms, and such de-structive chemicals as salt and alkali. Wyoming contains 98,000 square miles, and not a foot of land less than 4,000 feet high. Colo-rado has about the average elevation of Wyoming, Denver being nearly on the level of Cheyenne. Manifestly the high plains of these two Territories can never be of value except for grazing. Utah, as reduced, contains over 60,000 square miles; but, except possibly a few of the sunken deserts of the south, the lowest valley is higher than the average summit of the Alleghany Mountains, the surface of the Salt Lake being 4,250 feet above the sea. Hundreds of little valleys in the Rocky Mountains, beautiful as the Vale of Ilasselas from May till October, rich in grass and game, are yet useless to the farmer; grain can not be made to grow in them by any art of the husbandman. In Parley's Park, Heber C. Kimball tried for seven years to raise wheat; it was invariably " cut off in the flower" by the September frosts. At Soda Springs, Idaho, 6,500 feet above sea- level, the " Morrisite" Mormons tried farming for years; but only succeeded with rye and potatoes, which will ma-ture in a three- months' summer. On all the higher plains of Wyom-ing, frost may be looked for with certainty every month in the year. At the Navajo farms in Arizona, I have seen icicles six inches long on the rocks, only 300 feet above the fields, on the 18th of June ; and, in 1871, when the Indians had, with great labor, brought forward a crop of corn, and planted orchards, on the night of May 31st a storm of sleet froze every plant and tree solid to the ground. Nor are these such difficulties as can be overcome by in-dustry; we must wait till nature flattens out the country and brings it down into the region of warm air and abundant moisture. If all the low lands were fertile, there would still be a large area for agriculture; but they are far more barren than the mountains, except those tracts lying immediately at the base of the ranges, or in low valleys along some perennial stream. Every- where in the larger |
