SOLITARY PLACES MADE GLAD.

CHAPTER I.

THE "GREAT AMERICAN DESERT" A MYTH.

HE waters of the Missouri River, on the west, were once supposed to wash a country uninhabitable by civilized men. This country was thought to be a vast sandy plain, stretching away to the Rocky Mountains, with but here and there a shrub and spire of grass, and wholly unsusceptible of cultivation.
     In the earlier history of our country the "Great American Desert" was considered about the same in extent as the Sahara of Africa; and it is really amusing to read the opinions held, only a few years ago, by some of our best geographical writers touching the territory of which Nebraska is now a part.
     In 1793, Jedediah Morse published his "Universal Geography," and in this work he gives the most advanced knowledge of his time touching

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the interior of the North American continent. An extract or two will indicate the extent and accuracy of his knowledge. Much of his information was derived from the Indians. He says: "From the best accounts that can be obtained from the Indians, we learn that the four most capital rivers of the continent of North America--namely, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon [the Missouri], and the Oregon, or River of the West--have their sources in the same neighborhood,"
     Touching the nature of the country west of the Mississippi, he says: "It has been supposed that all settlers who go beyond the Mississippi will be forever lost to the United States."
     When the United States proposed to purchase from France the Louisiana territory, some of our ablest statesmen seemed to know but little of its extent or topography. Mr. Jefferson said with regard to it: ."The country which we wish to purchase is a barren sand, six hundred miles from east to west, and from thirty to forty and fifty miles from north to south." "In 1803 Congress attempted to extend the Indian trade into the wild northwest, and so organized the expedition that has become historic as that of Lewis and Clarke. The instructions for it were draughted in April, 1803. On the last day of the same month Louisiana was ceded to the United States;

and so the expedition, which consumed two years, four months, and nine days in the round-trip from and to St. Louis, resulted in an exploration of our own territory."
     In the Geography of Morse, and the report of the Lewis arid Clarke expedition, the shadows of the Great American Desert first appeared.
     Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike commanded two Government expeditions into the country in 1805-1807. He was sent out to examine the sources of the Mississippi, Missouri, Platte, and Arkansas Rivers, and he first gave prominence to the unfortunate myth in American geography. In his report to the War-office he declares the vast regions explored as repulsive to all emigrants and impossible ever to be settled, and then says
     "From these immense prairies may be derived one great advantage to the United States; namely, the restriction of our population to some certain limits, and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontier, will, through necessity, be constrained to limit their extent to the west to the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi, while they leave the prairies, incapable of cultivation, to the, wandering and uncivilized Aborigines of the country. It appears to me to be only possible to introduce a limited population to the banks of the Kansas, Platte, and Arkan-

sas." "In the year 1819-20, Major Stephen H. Long, of the Army, by order of John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, went out to explore the Missouri and its principal branches; and then, in succession, Red River, Arkansas, and the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri. The expedition took winter-quarters near Council Bluffs, and then swept the eastern base and slopes of the Rocky Mountains, along and among the heads and tributaries of the Missouri and its lower valleys. A few extracts from the report of Major Long will show how the 'desert' grew in area and in terror before the American people, and how good material it furnished to Europeans who wished to disparage the United States and discourage emigration, and prepare the way to capture Oregon. 'Of the country between the Mississippi and Missouri, it is reported that the scarcity of timber, mill-seats, and springs of water--defects that are almost uniformly prevalent--must, for a long time, prove serious impediments in the way of settling the country. Large tracts are often to be met with exhibiting scarcely a trace of vegetation.' The 'Great American Desert' manifests itself thus authoritatively in an official document in this report of a United States exploring expedition. Of the mountainous country beyond, Major Long says: 'It is a region destined by the barrenness of its soil, the inhos-

pitable character of its climate, and by other physical disadvantages, to be the abode of perpetual desolation.'" *
     From the reports of the Government explorations of Lewis and Clarke, Pike and Long, the material was furnished for the school histories and geographies of that day. These reports were considered authentic.
     "In 1824, Woodbridge and Willard published their 'Geography for Schools,' and they thus spoke to the generation of pupils whom a better information is now correcting." They say
     "From longitude 96°, or the meridian of Council Bluffs, to the Chippewa Mountains, is a desert region of four hundred miles in length and breadth. On approaching within one hundred miles of the Rocky Mountains, their snow-capped summits became visible. Here the hills become more frequent, and elevated rocks more abundant, and the soil more sterile, until we reach the abrupt chain of peaks which divide it from the western declivities of North America. Not a thousandth part can be said to have any timber growth, and the surface is generally naked.
     The predominant soil of this region is a sterile sand, and large tracts are often to be met with, which exhibit scarcely a trace of vegetation.

Agreeable to the best intelligence we have, the country, both northward and southward of that described, commencing near the sources of the Sabine and Colorado, and extending to the northern boundary of the United States, is throughout of a similar character."
     The Edinburgh Review, of 1843, contained the following, from the polished pen of Washington Irving: "There lies the desert, except in a few spots on the border of the rivers, incapable, probably forever, of fixed settlements. This is the great prairie wilderness, which has a general breadth of six hundred or seven hundred miles, and extends from south to north nearly fourteen hundred miles, so complete in the character of aridity that the great rivers--the Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande--after many hundred miles of course through the mountains, dry up altogether on the plains in summer, like the streams of Australia, leaving only standing pools of water between wide sand-bars."
     In his work entitled "Astoria," Washington Irving describes the Great American Desert in the following language: "An immense tract, stretching north and south four hundred of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributary streams of the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has

not inaptly been termed the 'Great American Desert". It is a land where no man permanently abides; for in certain seasons of the year there is no food, either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk, and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the range of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast, uninhabitable solitude, seamed by ravines, the former beds of torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveler . . . . Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West, which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life. It is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia."
     Mr. Irving's knowledge of the country he describes was not obtained from personal observation, but was gained at second-hand. He depended upon others for his information, and, relying upon their representations, unwittingly made erroneous statements that became current throughout the world. The men who gave Irving much of his information, were interested in the fur-trade, and it was to their interest to keep concealed many facts touching the country. It was the policy of these men to keep the world in ignorance

with regard to this region, that it might be kept as long as possible ''unoccupied as a game reserve."
     Mr. Irving afterwards made the following confession touching his own writings: "I have read somewhat, heard and seen more, and dreamed more than all. My brain is filled, therefore, with all kinds of odds and ends. In traveling,, these heterogeneous matters have become shaken up in my mind, as the articles are apt to be in an ill-packed traveling trunk, so that, when I attempt to draw forth a fact, I can not determine whether I have heard, read, or dreamed it, and I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories."
     As late as 1849, on the map of Olney's "Quarto Geography," from Northern Texas to the British Line, and from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, was a space in which was found, in large letters, the words, "Great American Desert."
     At a still later date an English writer in the Westminster Review says: "From the valley of the Mississippi to the. Rocky Mountains, the United States territory consists of an arid tract, extending south nearly to Texas, which has been called time 'Great American Desert.' This sterile region, covering such an immense area, contains but a few thousand miles of fertile land.
     Nature, marching from east to west, showered her bounties on the land of the United States, until

she reached the Mississippi, but there she turned aside and went northward to favor British territory."
     It is related of Benjamin Franklin that, in one of those courtly halls and gatherings in Europe, when nobility and statesmanship and diplomacy were toying with the young Republic, there hung a map of the United States, with that disheartening inscription, curving from the Texan to the British Border, "The Great American Desert." Franklin took ä pen and drew a broad, erasing line through the title. The prophecy uttered by Franklin's pen has been fulfilled. The desert has disappeared.
     For a number of years an army of "agricultural invaders" has been crowding the "Great American Desert," and this ghostly domain has been displaced by the best grain lands and grazing lands and mineral lands of the world. Today, a net-work of railroads covers the "Great American Desert," and hundreds of thousands of the finest farms in the world, whose fields yield from twenty to fifty bushels of wheat per acre, and from thirty to ninety bushels of corn per acre, dot the vast plains, once supposed to be uninhabitable. A few years have entirely dissipated the delusion touching the West, and the Sahara of the United States has been found to he one of the most fertile, picturesque, and inviting regions in the world.

.     The salubrious climate; the dry, pure air; the clear, blue sky; the hills and valleys clothed with a rich, green sward, and decorated with ten thousand beautiful flowers; the beautiful winding streams, skirted with timber, along which herds of buffalo and antelope once grazed,--all combine to enhance the beauty and loveliness of the rich and rolling prairies of Nebraska.
     And now, where but a few years ago the wild Indian lived in his wigwam, the beautiful city stands; where the buffalo, unmolested, grazed and ruminated, is seen the beautiful farm, with fields waving with luxuriant harvests. The war-whoop of the savage had scarcely died away when the sound of the church-going bell and the voice of prayer and song were heard. Where the buffalo, the elk, the deer, the antelope, lived in pence and held undisturbed sway, are now seen the church with its beautiful spire pointing heavenward, the university, the college, the common school, and all the institutions neccessary (sic) to the culture of the head and the heart.
     The forces that are at work to-day for the development of the country are tenfold greater than they were thirty years ago. Cities grow up as by magic; large farms are opened in a year; internal improvements are made with a rapidity that would stagger the faith of the most credulous who lived a generation ago.

     We have seen the buffalo-path transformed into the public highway, and the Indian-trail to the railroad, with its fiery steed snuffing the breeze, and sweeping with lightning speed from the Missouri River to the gold-washed shores of the Pacific.
     We have seen ignorance and barbarity melt. away before the mild and genial rays of civilization and the gospel; and the air that but a little while ago resounded with the wild war-cry of the savage, now resounds with the songs of peace.
     We are living in a wonderful era--the brightest and most inspiring of all the past. This is an age of wonderful advancement. And I am glad to chronicle the fact that the moral and intellectual development of the country keeps pace with its material advancement. It has been the pleasure of the writer to witness the making glad of these solitary places. He has seen, with his own eyes, the dreary and desolate plains of Nebraska transformed into gardens of beauty and glory. And it is the purpose in the following pages to delineate, to some extent, from actual observation, the progress of this work.
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