OCR Text |
Show TO FORT SEDGWICK. 19 it has the advantage of New England as an agricultural country. The great draw- backs are the dryness of the summer months, and the high winds that prevail. The former could be overcome by irrigation as in Salt Lake Val ley. After seeing what has been accomplished there by this means I shall not hereafter consider the absence of rain as a serious objection to a country where irrigation can be resorted to. No difficulty would attend its adoption along the Platte, and then the moisture necessary for vegetable life would be more certainly afforded than is done by the rains in the most favored agricultural districts. The absence of timber is another draw- back. Not a tree grows upon the banks of the Platte, and those on the islands are entirely inadequate to the demand that would arise for wood in a settled country. In the vicinity of Cotton Wood Springs some cedar and cotton wood grow, back in the bluffs, but with this exception the entire country from Kearney to Sedgwick is entirely without timber. Before starting from Leavenworth I provided myself with a mosquito bar as an important article in my out- fit, and in making up another for a similar trip I shall be as careful to add a ladies' tissue veil. Mosquitoes are very annoying insects ; but I think the little buffalo gnats are, I was going to say infinitely more so. To keep them off the face and neck is what the veil would be used for. During two or three marches along the Platte after a rain, these gnats proved ex ceedingly annoying. They are so small, that their presence on the skin is not detected until the irritation of their bite makes it known. Their favorite locality seemed to be on the neck and behind the ears, and so thick would they col lect, that after their bite not a particle of the skin of these parts would be free from the swelling and inflammation. While on the march from McPherson to Sedgwick one of the officers of our battallion very narrowly escaped death at the hands of a soldier belonging to another command. The man had straggled, and was indulging rather freely in Hostetter's Bitters in a ranch by the roadside, when the rear guard came up, and he was ordered by the officer in com- |