it is to irrigate, and the water lords expect to reap fancy prices for the land from settlers, in addition to rents which their great-great-great-grandchildren may fatten upon. In other cases, only the water is got by the men or companies, and they are content to confine themselves to the taxes they will impose on the land as fast as it is taken up. The cattle-men of Montana decry these schemes, and beg the officials and editors of the State not to discuss irrigation and small farming, as, they say, settlers may be induced to come in and spoil the stock or grazing business; yet I am told that one company of cattle-men has secured miles of land and the adjacent water rights along the Missouri against the inevitable day when- But the cattle business shall have another chapter.

The largest irrigation scheme that is reported is that engineered by Zachary Taylor Burton, a notable figure in Montana. It is in Choteau County, and taps the Teton River. The main ditch is forty miles long, fourteen feet wide at the bottom, and eighteen feet at the top. The ditch connects and fills two dead lake basins, which now serve as reservoirs, and are fully restored to their ancient condition, not only beautifying a now blooming country, but having their surfaces blackened with flocks of wild swan, geese, ducks, gulls, and other fowl in the season when those birds reach that country. Drives are to be laid around the lakes, and their neighborhoods are likely either to become pleasure resorts or the seats of well-to-do communities. This scheme looks forward to putting 30,000 acres under the ditch. Thus far the cost of preparing the land for cultivation has been five dollars an acre, and the charge for maintenance of the ditches will be about fifty cents an acre a year.

A very peculiar and interesting scheme is that of the Dearborn Company, in the valley of the same name. Here is a valley containing half a million acres, a sixth part of which may be cultivated. The rest is hilly, and will always be grazing land. The valley is between Great Falls and Helena, alongside the main divide of the Rockies. Here are a number of little watercourses - the Dry, Simms, Auchard, and Flat creeks-in themselves incompetent to water their little valleys. These are all to be utilized as ditches. By tapping the Dearborn River with a

six-foot-deep canal, thirty-eight feet wide, and only four and a half miles long, this natural system of watercourses is connected with a supply of water fed by eternal springs and frequent mountain snowfalls. The scheme embraces a hundred miles of main waterways and hundreds of miles of laterals. The greater part of the land benefited is obtainable by homesteaders.

I have spoken of the rush for water and land. Let me explain it with an illustration. One of the most lofty and ambitious grabbers in the State was not long ago observed to be engaging in a most mysterious business. He was taking women out into the wilderness, a stage-load or two at a time. They were very reputable women-school-teachers, type- writers, married women, and their friends. They were taken to a large and pleasantly situated house, upon the pretext that they were to attend a ball and a dinner, and get a hundred dollars as a present. It all proved true. Excursion party after excursion party went out in this way, and when the ladies returned to the town that had thus been pillaged of its beauty, they reported that they had fared upon venison and wildfowl, with the very best of "fixings," and that at the ball a number of stalwart and dashing cowboys had become their partners, tripping their light fantastic measures with an enthusiasm which made up for any lack of grace that may have been noticed. The reader may fancy what a lark it was to the women, and how very much enjoyment the more mischievous wedded ones among them got by pretending that they were maidens, heart-whole and free of fancy! But while those women were in the thick of this pleasure, they each signed a formal claim to a homesteader's rights in the lands thereabout. And as they "prove up" those claims in the fulness of time, each will get her one hundred dollars. The titles to the land will then be made over to the ingenious inventors and backers of the scheme, and the land will be theirs. "Thus," in the language of a picturesque son of Montana, a fellow can get a dukedom if he wants it." This is an absolutely true account of the conquest of a valley in Montana, and the future historian of our country will find much else that is akin to it, and that will make an interesting chapter in his records.

Governor Toole, in his message for 1891, abandons all hope of Federal supervision of this potentiality of wealth, and concludes his remarks with the statement that he assumes it to be the province of the Legislature to provide "against excessive and extortionate charges by individuals and companies engaged in the sale, rental, or distribution of water, and to prevent unjust discrimination in the disposal of the same to the public." He thinks the right of the State to regulate this matter should be asserted and maintained. He does not discuss the project of having the State develop and maintain the ditches, nor does he touch upon the next best alternative--of insisting that the farmers who own the land shall inherit the water plants after a fixed term of years.

But in considering Montana as it is, the main point is that there are thousands of ditches laid, and to-day a bird's-eye view of the State reveals valley after valley lying ready for the settler, like so many well-ordered parlors awaiting their guests. These parklike grassy bowls needed only the utilization of the water that is in or close to each one. There they lie, under sunny skies, carpeted with grass, bordered by rounding hills, rid of Indians, and all but empty of dangerous animals, waiting for the hodgepodge of new Americanism, to be made up of Swedes and Hollanders, Germans, Englishmen, and whoever else may happen along. What the State particularly needs is men of the Teutonic races, whose blood will not be stirred by the El Dorado-like traditions of vast and sudden wealth made in mining. It wants communities that will not be swept off the farm lands as by a cyclone at the first news that a new "lead" of gold or a new deposit of sapphires has been found in the mountains. Of such inflammable material, sent there in search of gold, and prone not to surrender the hope of finding more of it, has the State thus far been made up. The change is under way; the new people of a new and greater Pennsylvania are coming in, as we shall see. Five years from this, the politicians of Montana will be kowtowing to the farmer

vote.

The northeastern corner of Montana is all Dawson County-a tract as big as Maryland, Vermont, and Connecticut. It is all high rolling plains land, now in use for stock-raising. It is well watered by

tributaries of the Missouri, and abounds with little valleys, which will yet be very profitably farmed. Custer County, which takes up the remainder of the eastern end of Montana, is the same sort of land, and is a stock-raising country, but is yielding to the inroads of the farming element. It surprised the people of the State by the exhibit sent from there to the State fair last August. Wheat, oats, tomatoes, cabbages, potatoes, pumpkins, and squashes were in the yield, which was wellnigh complete, and of a high quality and size. All the lands that are watered are taken up, and this is true of the greater part of the State. The bench lands form the bulk of what remains. It has been demonstrated that they are very productive if water can be got to them, and since the streams are tapped on the mountain slopes, it is certain that they will, to a large extent, be irrigated.

Choteau County, in the north, and the next one west of Dawson, is a little empire in itself. It is slightly larger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. It is 100 miles wide and 225 miles long, and, to borrow a Western expression, the entire population of the Northwest could be "turned loose in it.” It is like Dawson County in charactera high rolling plateau given over to cattle, sheep, and the growing of the hardier grains. Rich "finds" of magnetic and hematite iron are reported from there. Park County is a very mountainous, crumpled-up, and rocky area, and is the northern extension and neighbor of the Yellowstone National Park. Sheep and cattle raising and mining are its principal industries, and, on account of the wonderful mining "finds" that have recently been made there, the little county is knocking at the doors of Congress for a favor. Cook City, down on the southern edge of the county, is the beginning of a wonderful mining camp-that is to say, it is wonderful in the amount of ore there that could be profitably worked if coke and coal and transportation facilities could be had at reasonable cost. But, apparently, the only practicable route to the camp is through a corner of the National Park, and the miners are asking Congress to allow the rails to be laid there. They have had a discouraging experience thus far. The mines are principally in the hands of the discoverers, and since a prospector is usually the

poorest man in the world, they cannot afford to spend much to make their needs known to the public. The prospector, the reader should understand, is the indefatigable Wandering Jew of the mountains, who prowls about amid every sort of danger, hammer in hand, and dining on hope more often than food, and who, after discovering a "lead," gives an interest in it to capital, and then is very fortunate if he is not frozen out. The metals that have been found in Park County are silver and lead. There is very little gold, but coal has long been very profitably mined at several points in the county.

Gallatin County, next to the westward of Park, is a mountainous and mineral region also, but it contains the Gallatin Valley, which, to the agriculturist, is just now one of the most interesting districts in the United States. This great valley has more snowfall than any county in the State--at least the snow lies there longer than anywhere else. The result of the moisture, in conjunction with the character of the soil, is that the valley is one of the richest grain-producing regions in the State. For years barley has been raised there for the use of the brewers of Montana. When some samples of this Gallatin Valley barley reached New York, the brewers there refused to believe that any such barley was or could be grown anywhere in the world. They thought that what was shown to them was a lot of carefully selected samples. They deputized a committee to visit the valley, and found that the barley which had so astonished them was the common barley of the country. The grain is very clear, almost to the point of being translucent, and is in color a golden yellow. The brewers declare that no better grain for their use is grown in the world. They have organized a company, taken the water right, bought various tracts of land, amounting to 10,000 acres, and are going to try to make the valley the great malting centre of the continent, if not of the world. They have put up malting-houses at two points, have established some twenty miles of irrigating ditches already, and by furnishing the seed and buying the yields are encouraging the farmers of the valley to grow barley. They cultivated 2500 bushels in 1890, and raised sixty bushels to the acre. Last year they had 10,000 acres under cultivation. They

expect in a few years to be selling barley to all the brewers of the country who value what the New-Yorkers think is the best grain obtainable. This is the nearest approach to what is called bonanza or big-scale farming in the State of Montana.

All that central district of the State, including Meagher and Fergus counties, and more besides, has been slow in the development of its mining resources. Mines have been held for years since they were discovered, because it has been hard to make capitalists and railroad men see what was in the country. It is almost always the case in such a wealthy mining region as Montana that news of rich finds is published every day, and capitalists hear the tales of prospectors with fatigued and half-closed ears. But now two routes have been surveyed into Meagher County by the Northern Pacific Company, and the Great Northern and Burlington and Missouri roads are expected to go in. All will head for Castle, the great mining camp of the country, where two smelteries are already turning out lead and silver, and freighting bullion 150 miles to the nearest railway.

Thus we reach the county of which Great Falls is the seat of government and of many interesting industries and operations. This is Cascade County. It is here that the noted and majestic falls of the Missouri occur in a succession of splendid cascades. Here a company, controlled by wealthy men of New York, Helena, and Great Falls, have taken up something like twelve miles on either side of the river at these falls, and have thus possessed themselves of what is undoubtedly the finest and greatest waterpower in the West, comprising in all at least 250,000 horse-power, and more easily handled than that of Niagara. An auxiliary company owns a large town site there, and a very promising and considerable town has already grown up to handle the wheat and wool and beef of the region, and to be already the site of smelting-works, factories, and other establishments which have been attracted by the cheap and abundant water-power. In the shrewdness and reasonableness of the management of Great Falls lie much of the hope for its future. The town has never been "boomed." It is planned with broad avenues and streets, and even now contains several blocks of really notable stone and brick buildings along its main

street. It has a fine opera-house, club, hotel, and strong banks. Its population is above 7000.

This Cascade County is a very new part of Montana. A small proportion of the land is all that is yet taken, but experiments with this have led the people there to believe that there is no richer land in the State. Thus far the settlers are chiefly Americans. It has been and is yet a grazing country, but it is seen that as civilization pushes into it, the cattle business is being hurt. The difficulty in obtaining cowboy assistance is noticeable wherever farms and well-governed towns spring up, and this difficulty is increasing in this region. The cowboy and civilization are neighbors, but not friends. But it is a good grass country, and the grass is vastly better than that in Dakota, which becomes frozen and loses its nutriment. Here the Chinook winds from the Pacific come in at all times in the winter, never failing to blow upon all except twenty or twenty-five days in each winter. They clear off the snow like magic. Twelve thousand cattle were shipped from Great Falls during 1891. But the wool business exceeded that. From the same point last year nearly three millions of pounds of wool more than were sent from any other point in the United States -were shipped from the backs of the sheep. Because of the rich soil and good grass, very little sand blows about to load down and damage the fibre of the wool. That is the case every where within 150 to 200 miles of the east slope of the Rockies. Sheep in this country have none of the destructive diseases which assail them elsewhere. The sheep and wool industries are going to be enormous in Montana on that account, whether the herding be upon the ranges, as at present, or in small herds managed by farmers, and raised upon the benches and side-hills that will not be brought under the ditch.

But in view of the future of the State, the experiments in agriculture are even more interesting than the harnessing of the cascades of the Missouri to the wheels of manufacture. The sugar-beet grows finely, in answer to the generally discussed project in most of these new States to render that form of sugar-making a leading industry when the lands are well settled. Fine, luscious strawberries grow right out on the plains wherever they have been planted, and one man on Belt

Creek sold $170 worth of currants, raspberries, and strawberries from one acre of ground last year. Barley thrives in the soil, and has no dews or rains to bleach or "must" it when it is ripening. Wheat that is graded "No. 1 Northern " in Minneapolis grows thirty to fifty bushels to the acre. There is an orchard there already, producing fine apples; and here we get the first news of the astonishing potatoes of Montana - "the terrapin of the State," as they have been wittily called.

There are no such potatoes in the world as are grown in Montana. They attain prodigious size, and often weigh three, four, or five pounds apiece. Eighteen such potatoes make a bushel. To the taste they

are like a new vegetable. The larger ones are mealy, but the smaller ones are like sacks of meal; when the skin is broken the meat falls out like flour. It must very soon become the pride of every steward in the first-grade hotels, restaurants, and clubs of the cities here--and even in Europe-to prepare these most delicious vegetables for those who enjoy good living. As these potatoes of the choicest quality can be cultivated in all the valleys east of the Rocky Mountains, there will soon be no lack of them. To-day the only ones that have left the State have been the few bushels sent to gourmets in New York, Washington, and San Francisco.

All this country east of the mountains must be irrigated to insure good crops. An early and general development of the farm lands is relied upon, because the great mining camps of the State will consume nearly all the products of the farms as fast as the farms increase in number. There is no danger that the mining camps will not grow and multiply to keep the demand strong. The miners are the best people in the world to farm for, because they produce money and they pay cash. The southern end of Lewis and Clarke County is a succession of fine valleys. Here is Helena, the capital of the State. Six miles away a cluster of gold mines is being reopened, after having produced millions. In this county the largest mine is the Drum Lummon, an English property that has paid dividends for many years. And here are the famous ruby and sapphire fields, on the bed-rock of former benches or bottoms of the Missouri. Strawberries of a

large and luscious variety will yield 10,000 baskets to the acre, and have sold in the past at a fixed rate of twenty cents a basket for home consumption. Apples, plums, crab-apples, grapes, currants, and all berries grow in wonderful abundance, and find an eager and high-priced market close at hand. Oats weigh forty and fifty pounds a bushel, as against thirty-two pounds in the East, and a yield of sixty bushels to the acre can be obtained. All wheat that is brought out here for seeding produces a soft grain. It has been sent to Minneapolis to be ground into flour for pastry and cracker bakers. The Cracker Trust is building a big bakery in Helena, to be near this product. It is not a bread-making grain. But a new population is needed to reap the wealth that is offered from small fruits. The Chinamen are harvesting this money now, but they do not meet the home demand. It is a rich country, and will some day dry and can large crops of fruits and berries. The side-hills will graze small bands of cattle. If the bunchgrass sod is ploughed up, there follows a growth of blue-joint grass that is like timothy, and that is very high, heavy, and nutritious. The same result follows irrigation wherever it is permitted.

Jefferson, Madison, Silver Bow, Beaver Head, and Deer Lodge counties, in the mountains, are all very nearly like what has just been described. Mining is the principal source of revenue, and wheat, oats, potatoes, and stock are the other products.

West of the Rockies is quite a different country. It is all practically in Missoula County. The mountains are full of minerals; the valleys will produce anything, apparently, that grows in the temperate zone -even corn. Irrigation is not so absolutely necessary, and is not necessary at all in a great part of it. The land is lower; the rains are heavier; the winds from the Japan current blow there with frequency and strength, and are almost uninterrupted. Verdure remains green there all summer, and the abundance of timber, the many streams, and the verdant hills render the scenery more like what the Eastern man is accustomed to than that which he sees east of the Rockies in Montana. The southern part of Missoula County has been settled many years, largely by thrifty French Canadians, and it contains as fine farms as VOL. LXXXV.-No. 505.-11

In

will be seen almost anywhere. Here are orchards, and small fruits grow in abundance for shipment to the Coeur d'Alene mining camps in Idaho. Here is a milling company that produced seventy-five millions of feet of lumber last year. the north is a new country wrested from the Flathead reservation. The Flathead Valley is forty miles long and one-half as wide, possessing a deep soil and a clay subsoil. It is farmed without irrigation. Several tributary valleys of the same quality open out of the main valley. Large crops of grain, hay, vegetables, and fruit have been harvested there, but the farmers have heretofore been without a market, and have subsisted by raising horses and cattle, and driving them abroad for purchasers. The entrance of the Great Northern Railroad, now accomplished, will open up this rich territory, and will develop the timber resources as well as the deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas, which seem to be very extensive there. The mountains are practically unprospected, and have only just been mapped by Lieutenant Ahern, U.S.A., who has philanthropically devoted his summers to that arduous and dangerous work. Indications of quartz are seen on every hand in the mountains. Taking the county as a whole, two years ago not a mining prospect was continuously worked, while now four mines are shipping and paying profits of $40,000 a month. The "leads" in the county are continuations of those in the Coeur d'Alene country in Idaho. Coal as good as the Lethbridge product of Canada is found there in vast quantities. It is a fine sporting region. The Flathead Lake, which has 318 square miles of surface, is cold and clear, and so deep that it has been sounded to a depth of 1000 feet. It is full of landlocked salmon and big trout, and harbors millions of ducks and geese in their season, while deer and winged game are plenty in the country around it. The Flathead Indians, south of the lake, have nice farms, and raise cattle besides. They are self-sustaining, and at least a dozen can be named who have accumulated between $20,000 and $50,000. They are a fine, stalwart people.

They are not in reality Flatheads; they have no knowledge that the tribe ever followed the practice of compressing the heads of the children, as was done by the tribes at the mouth of the Columbia River.