Because the Bad Lands are without grass, the rain has cut their surface into thousands and thousands of little galleys. In some of the hollows between the hills, however, a little soil gathers, and in such places enough pas ture can be found to support a few cattle.
There are not many streams in such a level land of little rain. A few rivers, fed by the snows of the Rocky Mountains, flow across the plain. In the north, where the mountains are higher and there is more snow, these streams are larger than in the south. The Missouri and South Saskatchewan are the largest streams of this great region. How much of the Missouri is navigable? (Fig. 80.) 105. Cattle raising.—Some early settlers of the plains tried to grow wheat and corn, as they had done in the Corn Belt. On account of the small rainfall, the crops failed and cattle and sheep raising were tried. These have proved successful.
The bunch grass stands on the plains all winter, and is as good for the animals as is the hay in the barn, if only there is enough of it.
There is so little snow that the grass is rarely covered up for long; and the cattle, like the buffalo, antelope, and deer, used to pick their own living on the plains. Much of the land still be longs to the Government, because the Government does not give it away in tracts large enough for a ranch.
Many large bands of sheep roam over the eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana, and the cattle-men sometimes fight the sheep men, because the sheep not only eat the grass so closely that none is left for the cattle, but their feet also give out an oil that is so distasteful to the cattle that they will not eat even good grass after sheep have walked over it.
106. Irrigation water.—It is easy to irri gate the plains where the streams bring water from the mountains. In a short time after the region was settled, all the water that flowed in such rivers as the Arkansas and the Platte, was used up near the foot of dip mountains, and long stretches of good land lay dry, begging for water.
The United States Government now helps with irrigation work by building large dams across the streams back in the mountains. The part of the valley above the dam fills up and becomes a lake or reservoir. Thus enough water is held to irrigate thousands of farms on the Great Plains; these farms then produce crops without rain. (See Figs. 115,
140.) The Canadian Government does the same thing. It has built large irrigation works on the South Saskatchewan like those that our Government has made on the Missouri, the Big Horn, the Platte, the Yel lowstone, and other streams. In Montana, the Missouri River in some places flows through a deep valley, which is so narrow that there is but little land over which the water can be made to flow. But there is coal beside the stream. This is used to run engines that pump water up to the fields on the level plain back of the high banks.
107. Irrigated crops.—Alfalfa, the chief crop grown on the irrigated land of all this region, makes the best of hay. In winter, or in seasons of drought when pasture fails, sheep, cattle, 'and horses come in from the pastures on the dry plains and are fed from the alfalfa stacks. The farmer grows alfalfa, but he sells cattle, sheep, and horses. These are the chief products of the Plains. It is fortunate that the irrigated land is scattered in many rich valleys, so that the alfalfa stacks can be close to the ranges where the sheep and cattle eat grass to get a part of their living. (Sec. 105.) In the valley of the Arkansas River, in eastern Colorado, is a trucking district from which, in summer, the famous Rocky Ford cantaloups are sent by hundreds of carloads to eastern markets. In some of the other irrigation districts many potatoes are grown, but they are so far from the market (Sec. 96) that sometimes the pigs have to eat the potatoes. Sugar beets, which are also grown, furnish pulp for cows and sugarfor men. Beets are easier to market than potatoes.
108. Dry farming.—Since the failure of the first farmers who came to the Great Plains (Sec. 105), there has been much study to find new crops or new methods by which farmers could succeed on this wide land of little rain. One of the new ways is to plow a field and let it lie bare for a year, so that there are no plants in it to use the moisture. The next year a crop is sown. It receives the rain of that year, and uses also some of the rainwater remaining in the ground from the year before. By this "summer fallow ing, " one of the methods of "dry farming," some grain is now grown in parts of the Great Plains, and in many other regions of little rain (Sec. 133, Fig. 461).