Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 1 (of 2): A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881Russell, William Howard, Sir
History
Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 1 (of 2): A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881
Russell, William Howard, Sir
United States -- Description and travel
It would probably be unjust to suppose that the praise and
recommendation of the gentlemen connected with the great lines are
much, if at all, influenced by the consideration of their own
interests as officers or shareholders; and therefore I may take it for
granted that the assertion, that "no matter what the speciality of the
farmer may be, he will find soil and climate in the sections of the
Company to suit him," is justified. Along by Cottonwood, and the
eastern half of the Marion county, the high rolling prairie, covered
with sweet nutritious grass, broken at short intervals by numerous
valleys of corn, a quarter of a mile to a mile wide, through which
flow perennial streams fed by hundreds of living springs, and fringed
with timber, is peculiarly adapted to cattle-raising and dairying as
a speciality, and the soil and climate are favourable to general
farming. Between Florence and the Great Bend is described as the
finest portion of Kansas. The county is gently rolling, in rich fields
of which nearly every acre can be tilled, with deep upland soil and
dark sandy loam underlaid with a porous marl, almost equal in
fertility and affording a perfect and natural drainage. It is almost
ridiculous to enumerate the crops which can be grown, according to my
authority in this district--corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, flax,
buckwheat, tobacco, Irish and sweet potatoes, sorghum, castor-beans,
broom-corn, rice-corn, millet, clover, timothy, peanuts, silkworms,
apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, grapes, and all kinds of
vegetables.
There was in 1879, and a part of last year, a terrible drought in the
western portion of the State, and Mr. Bennyworth, seeing that wheat
could not be grown in consequence, planted 600 acres of sugar-cane,
and was rewarded for his intelligence and enterprise by a crop of
which the sugar and syrup are equal to the best of Louisiana--10 tons
to the acre, every ton producing 80 lbs. of sugar and 2 gallons of
syrup, the average yield of the acre being 800 lbs. of sugar, at 10c.,
and 20 gallons of syrup. Value of the crop $75 to $80 per acre, or
from 15_l._ to 16_l._, which is, they say, a clear profit of 8_l._ an
acre. The United States at present pays about 20,000,000_l._ to
foreign countries for sugar; and if this new industry succeeds, a
large outflow of money will be cut off and turned westwards into the
pockets of the Kansas farmer. Dhoura, or Egyptian corn, is being also
cultivated with success, and is pronounced very excellent food for
hogs, cattle, and horses, giving the stock-raiser of the West cheap
food for his cattle, and, in conjunction with the buffalo-grass,
enabling him to fatten them at the smallest possible rate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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