NEBRASKA, one of the United States of America, lying in lat. 40° to 43° n., and long. 95° to 104° w.; bounded on the w. by Wyoming, and n. by Dakota, being partly separated from the latter by the Missouri river and its branch the Niobrara; e. by Iowa and Missouri, from which it is separated by the Missouri river; s. by Kansas and Colorado. This state is about 425 m. from east to west, and from 138 to 208 from north to south, and has an area estimated at 75,095 sq. miles. Originally, when this state was a territory, it extended from the Missouri river to the Rocky mountains, and from hit. to the boundary of what was, at the time, British America. The chief towns are Omaha city, the starting point of the Union Pacific railway, Nebraska City, and Lincoln, the capital. Nebraska is a vast plain rising gradually towards the Rocky mountains, with immense prairies, the haunts of vast herds of buffalo, and with fertile and well-timbered river-bottoms. The chief rivers are the Missouri on its eastern. and the Niobrara, partly on the northern boundary, the Platte or Nebraska, and the Republican fork of the Kansas, and their branches. The Platte valley, running through the whole center of the territory, is
broad and fertile. There are quarries of sandstone, a soft limestone which hardens on exposure, and thin ned4 of coal. In the mountainous western region are mines of gold, silver, copper, and cinnabar. Between the fertile lands of the eastern and central por tion and the mountains is a great desert valley of 30 by 90 m., 300 ft. deep, full of rocky pinnacles, and rich in fossil remains. The climate is dry and salubrious, with an abundance of clear sunny days. The country produces wheat, maize, hemp, tobacco, and fruits in abundance, while the rolling prairies afford unequaled pasturage. The Omahas, Pawnees, Otoes, Sioux, and other wild tribes hunt over the unoccupied terri tories, but the immigration is progressing rapidly. Erected as a territory in 1851, it had, in 1860, a population, exclusive of Indians, of 28,836; and in 1870, with the same exclusion, it was 122,117. Nebraska became a state in 1867. See Nebraska, by Edwin A. Curley (Lond. 1875).