Education:-Our latest statistics of education are from Governor Potts' report to the Secretary of the Interior in October, 1878. There has been considerable progress since that time. Graded schools had been established at Helena, Virginia City, Bozeman, Butte and Deer Lodge, and large, well-ventilated brick schoolhouses had been erected for them. The other educational statistics were as follows: The above table also dates from 1878, and probably most of the items would be doubled in the autumn of 1880 by the influx of population and the efforts of home missionaries. We know that the Congregationalists, the Lutherans and the Baptists have now organizations, and we think church edifices, and probably some other denominations also. The state of morals is probably not worse than in other new territories, and perhaps better than some; but there is less regard for the Sabbath than there should be, and infidel clubs abound, while the usual concomitants of new settlements, gambling and drinking saloons and brothels, are very numerous. This is particularly the case in most of the new settlements, the mining camp at Wickes being, however, an honorable and conspicuous exception. After a time these mining towns acquire a better and more creditable population, and the rougher class go on to newer settlements, where the same scenes are re-enacted. The only remedy for this state of things is that moral, and especially Christian people, who settle in these new towns and camps, should maintain their religious character, and put down, by vigorous and decided action, Sabbath-breaking, gambling and drinking, and though the struggle may be severe at first, they will find it not only pleasant but greatly advantageous to the permanent prosperity of their settlements. Mr. Wickes has been successful in doing this at his large camp, and is now reaping the reward of his firmness for the right. CHAPTER XIV. NEBRASKA. AREA AND EXTENT-BOUNDARIES-COMPARATIVE AREA-ITS RIVERINE BOUND- NEBRASKA, one of the States of the central belt of "Our Western Empire," lying between the parallels of 40° and 43° north latitude, and between 95° 20' and 104° of west longitude from Greenwich. It is bounded on the north by Dakota; on the east by the Missouri river, which separates it from Iowa and Missouri; on the south by Kansas and Colorado, and on the west by Colorado and Wyoming. Its area, according to the United States Land Office, is 75,995 square miles, or 48,636,800 acres. Its greatest length from east to west is 412 miles, and its breadth SURFACE OF THE COUNTRY. 1005 from north to south 208 miles. It is larger than all New England and New Jersey, and as large as Ohio and Indiana together. The Missouri river not only forms its entire eastern boundary, but in conjunction with the Niobrara, one of its larger tributaries, and the Keya Paha, an affluent of that stream, gives a riverine boundary to nearly one-half of its northern border. Surface of the Country-Gradual Descent from West to East Rivers, Bluffs, Hills, Valleys.-The State is called prairie. So it is, in the sense of the word which means meadow; but not in that secondary sense which implies a land of uniform flatness. In real truth, Nebraska is a part of the lowest eastern grassclothed slope of the Rocky Mountains. The eye alone will make no observer aware of this fact. Nevertheless, from the eastern to the western boundary of Nebraska, there is a gradual and uninterrupted rise of the land of about seven feet to the mile in Eastern Nebraska, and from that to ten feet in the west; and thus it is that while the land on the eastern boundary is 910 feet above sea-level, on the western boundary it is about 5,000. The surface form of the State is, of course, made by the rivers. The eastern front of the country shows bold, wooded bluffs to the Missouri, their outlines being cut and scarped into fantastic and picturesque forms by the washing water. West of the Missouri bluffs, except on the table lands, there is no flat, but a land of many changing forms-now broad bottoms, bounded by low hills; now picturesque bluffs, and, especially in the grazing region, ravines sometimes as rugged as the gulches in the gold fields. In the northwestern part of the State, in the region lying between the sources of the Middle Loup fork and the Niobrara river, there are extensive sand hills, and those clay deposits, cut into the most fantastic forms by the erosion of the mountain streams. These are the "Nebraska Bad Lands," and are connected, both geologically and geographically, with the Dakota "Bad Lands," on and near the White Earth river, and between that river and the Big Cheyenne. These "Bad Lands" are uninhabitable, but they are very interesting for their fossils, of which we shall have more to say under the Geology of Nebraska. Now and again a river flows full to the bank, from which the bottom-from a mile to four or more miles wide-spreads out on either hand; but generally the streams run in deep beds, the high, steep banks and the narrow first bench being thickly clothed with timber. The general ascending lay of the land is broken from west to east by three main drainage channels. On the northern boundary of the State are the Niobrara and the Missouri rivers, of which latter the Niobrara is an affluent. The Niobrara has many tributaries, some of them of considerable size; and several of them, as their names imply, have many rapids and waterfalls.* The Platte, a winding, shallow, spreading stream, has the sources of both of its main streams, the North and South forks of the Platte, far up the main range or Great Divide of the Rocky Mountains in Central Colorado; the North fork also traversing a great extent of territory in Wyoming; both forks cross Nebraska from west to east to their point of junction at North Platte. Before the division, the Platte river receives two large tributaries, the Loup Fork river, which, with its three branches, North, Middle and South, traverses a large territory, and the Elkhorn, which drains Northeastern Nebraska. On the south bank, neither the Platte nor the North Platte receive any considerable streams. The South Platte receives on its north bank Lodge Pole creek, in the valley of which the Union Pacific road is constructed for 1 50 miles. From fifty to eighty miles south of the Platte, the Republican river, the largest tributary of the Kaw or Kansas river, having its sources in Eastern Colorado, traverses the southern and southwestern counties of the State, receiving three large affluents, Medicine Lake creek, White Man's fork and Rock creek, on its northern bank, and an infinitude of small streams on both banks. Other smaller but considerable tributaries of the Kansas drain the southeast of the State. The general direction and flow of all these rivers is to the southeast. In their gradual descent from the lofty plateau at the west of the State, the rivers and streams, in seeking the lowest level, I * Eau qui Court-"the water that leaps"-Mini Chadusa, or Rapid creek, Antelope creek, the Rapid river, are a few of the names of these affluents. |