Bluegrass region

“ Still, I have no doubt there is a distinct variety of woman known as the blue-grass girl. A geologist told me that once when he was footing it over the State with a geologist from another State, as they approached the blue-grass region from the southward they were carefully examining the rock formation and studying the surface indications, which are usually marked on the border line, to determine exactly where the peculiar limestone formation began. ”

“ We should be surprised if a rich agricultural region, healthful at the same time, where there is abundance of food, and wholesome cooking is the rule, did not affect the tone of social life. And I am almost prepared to go further, and think that blue-grass is a specific for physical beauty and a certain graciousness of life. I have been told that there is a natural relation between Presbyterianism and blue-grass, and am pointed to the Shenandoah and to Kentucky as evidence of it. Perhaps Presbyterians naturally seek a limestone country. ”

“ Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest—to Cheapside. Cheapside—at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from pioneer days to the present hour—the platform that knew Clay, Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang. ”

“ Enter the blue-grass region from what point you choose—and you may do this, so well traversed is it by railways—and you become sensitive to its influence. If you come from the North or the East, you say: "This is not modern America. Here is something local and unique. For one thing, nothing goes fast here." By-and-by you see a blue-grass race-horse, and note an exception. But you do not also except the rider or the driver. The speed is not his. He is a mere bunch of mistletoe to the horse. Detach him, and he is not worth timing. Human speed for the most part lies fallow. ”

“ One distinction of the blue-grass region is the forests, largely of gigantic oaks, free of all undergrowth, carpeted with the close-set, luscious, nutritive blue-grass, which remains green all the season when it is cropped by feeding. The blue-grass thrives elsewhere, notably in the upper Shenandoah Valley, where somewhat similar limestone conditions prevail ”

“ What is to be the future of the Blue-grass Region? When population becomes denser and the pressure is felt in every neighborhood, who will possess it? One seems to see in certain tendencies of American life the probable answer to this question. The small farmer will be bought out, and will disappear. Estates will grow fewer and larger. The whole land will pass into the hands of the rich, being too precious for the poor to own. ”

“ Europe can boast, indeed, no peculiarity of surface assuming like configuration or exhibiting like phenomena.
When, then, we reflect, that of all those plains which spread out themselves upon our globe, the North American prairie possesses characteristics peculiar to itself, and to be met with nowhere beside; when we consider the demonstrations of a soil of origin incontestably diluvial; when we wander over the heaving, billowy surface, and behold it strewed with the rocky offspring of another region, and, at intervals, encased in the saline crust of the ocean-sediment ”

“ Over most of the Province of the Lake and Prairie Plains the Laurentide glacier spread its drift, rich in limestone and other rock powder, which farmers in less favored sections must purchase to replenish the soil. The alluvial deposit from primeval lakes contributed to fatten the soil of other parts of the prairies. Taken as a whole, the Prairie Plains surpass in fertility any other region of America or Europe, unless we except some territory about the Black Sea. It is a land marked out as the granary of the nation ”

“ A drear land, but yet less heart-sickening than the stretches of bleak and barren landscape we have so often gazed upon through Nevada, Utah and Colorado. Despite the dry and parched appearance of this immediate region, it is yet counted a fine grazing country, and the cattle range and thrive all the year round upon the tufted bunches of the sweet, nutritious buffalo-grass that everywhere here naturally abounds. ”

“ It is unquestionably the prairie conflagrations that keep down the woody growth upon most of the western uplands. The occasional skirts and fringes which have escaped their rage, have been protected by the streams they border. Yet may not the time come when these vast plains will be covered with timber? It would seem that the prairie region, long after the discovery of America, extended to the very banks of the Mississippi. ”

“ By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly, for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains. Higher and higher grew the green swelling slopes, until, climbing one about noon next day, he saw the blue foothills of the Cumberland through the clear air—and he stopped and looked long, breathing hard from pure ecstasy. The plain-dweller never knows the fierce home hunger that the mountain-born have for hills. ”

“ The Blue Ridge is a well-watered region, and characteristic of the country are the innumerable springs which form creeks and small streams. A mild and bracing climate results from these physical features. The rapidity with which the streams rise and their swiftness, together with almost constant breezes in the mountains, reduce the humidity so prevalent in the southern lowlands. Although the rainfall is greater than anywhere else in the United States, except Florida, the sudden fall in the topography of the watercourses brings quick drainage. ”

“ The short and sweet buffalo-grass is indigenous through all this region, and is said to be nutritious, even when dried up, the year round. What a magnificent range for stock these great Plains will yet afford, when the country becomes more thickly settled up! Much of this region is marked on the old maps as the "Great American Desert;" but from all we saw and heard I doubt not, as a whole, it will yet become the great stock-raising and dairy region of the Republic, whence we shall export beef and mutton, leather and wool, in exchange for cloth and steel. ”

“ From the richness and extent of its pasturage, and the dryness of its soil and climate, British Columbia offers great advantages to the breeder of stock. But there are certain drawbacks, the principal of which is that an immense extent of country would be required by each stock farmer. The only grass is the “bunch-grass.” It covers the terraces of the Fraser, and the rolling swells and mountain-sides of the central region. Growing in the separate “tufts”388 from which it has taken its name, it fixes but a slight hold upon the light, powdery soil with its slender roots. ”

“ In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies coalesce, but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in the north. The southeast front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarpment, rising abruptly from the Piedmont Plateau of Carolina. Not one river cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the westward are higher and much more massive. It is the watershed of this whole mountain region. ”

“ Two of the travellers were ladies from the bluegrass and scarcely one of all the natives lingering about the workings had ever seen a lady from the bluegrass, while, to the young surveyors and the group of civil engineers who had, for months, been exiled by their work among the mountains from all association with such lovely creatures, it was a joy to stand apart and covertly gaze at them. ”

“ When the fur traders had cleared the streams of beaver and the plains of buffalo, the region that is now the Dakotas and Montana, was regarded for the most part, as a barren no man's land to be got over as quickly as possible in the rush to the Pacific. ”

“ This region, in general of poor soils, marks the falls of the rivers and the head of navigation. How important this is may easily be seen by noticing the location of the cities in Georgia, for instance, and remembering that the country was settled before the day of railroads. In Alabama the Black Prairie is interposed between the Pine Hills and the Sand Hills, and this prairie swings northward into Mississippi. The Pine Hills give way to the more level Pine Flats, which slope with a gradient of a few feet a mile to the ocean or the gulf, which usually has a narrow alluvial border. ”

“ The most widespread habitat of the cleared upland on the south part of the preserve is the blue-grass habitat. In this [Pg 13] habitat the blue-grass, Poa, is the dominant plant, growing to a height of usually not over 0.5 meter. With the blue-grass are associated a few thistles, yarrow, and several other herbs. During the whole period of my stay in the region, July and August, the habitat was very dry, and the grass and herbs had mostly dried up. ”

“ The great plains of the Upper Columbia, stretching from the river away to the far north, are incomparably rich, the soil of great depth and wondrous fertility, rainless harvests, and a luxuriance of farm and garden produce which is almost tropical in its wealth. This favored region has been for years known as the
PALOUSE COUNTRY,
and is reached from Portland via Pendleton, on the main line of the Union Pacific Ry. From Pendleton to Spokane Falls on the north the soil is rich beyond belief; a black, loamy deposit so deep that it seems well-nigh inexhaustible. ”

“ The valley of this stream is high rolling prairies, and is very fertile. Its bottoms are wide, and there are numerous branches coming in from both sides, on all of which there is timber in most varieties found West of the Mississippi, some of which is good.
Ninety miles above our crossing, we came to and crossed Big Blue River, one of its main branches. Here the Emigrants came up with us, and it was late in the night before their last wagons got over. This region has the character of being the residence of inhabitants introduced themselves in a manner that was by no means agreeable. ”

“ Eastward of that meridian, the principal objects which strike the eye of a traveler are the absence of timber, and the immense expanse of prairie, covered with the verdure of rich grasses, and highly adapted for pasturage. Wherever they are not disturbed by the vicinity of man, large herds of buffalo give animation to this country. Westward of Laramie river, the region is sandy, and apparently sterile; and the place of the grass is usurped by the artemisia and other odoriferous plants, to whose growth the sandy soil and dry air of this elevated region seem highly favorable. ”

“ Kansas and Nebraska, a very large aggregate surface has been broken up, and holds more of the rains than formerly. During the same period modifying influences have been put in motion in Montana, Utah, and Colorado. Very small areas of timbered land west of the Missouri have been cleared—not equal, perhaps, to the area of forest, orchard, and vineyards planted. Hence it may be said that all the acts of man in this vast region have tended to produce conditions on the earth's surface ameliorative of the climate. ”

“ He asserted the view that only two primary subdivisions of the Nearctic Region should be made—a ‘Boreal’ province and a ‘Sonoran’ province. The former stretches from New England and the Great Lakes northwest across Canada to Alaska, and sends down long arms along the heights of the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, and along the Pacific Coast, whose fauna is a mingled one. Everything south of this is ‘Sonoran,’ embracing nearly all the United States, a great area of the plains of Northwestern Canada, and all of Mexico except the low tropical coast-lands. ”

“ In so far as the relative advantages of different portions of this wide region may be thought by many to preponderate over one another, we do not appreciate them at all, but would as soon risk a herd in the valley of the Upper Missouri, the Yellowstone, or the Saskachewan, as along the Arkansas, the Canadian, or Red River. If any difference, the grass is better north than south. One year the winter may be more severe in the extreme north ”

“ The sun may be scorching hot in an unprotected corn patch on a hillside, yet it is cool in the shade. And, as in California and the north woods, a blanket is needed at night. The climate is contrasting, being coldest in the highlands where the temperature is almost as low as that 8 of northern Maine. Yet nowhere in the United States is it warmer than in the lowlands of the Blue Ridge.
In the highlands, carboniferous rocks produce a sandy loam which is responsible for the vast timber growth there. Throughout it is rich in minerals, coal, iron, and even gold, which has been mined in Georgia. ”

“ The dwarf palmetto, which forms such a characteristic growth in Florida, extends northward in the Mississippi basin to the southern border of the Ozark uplift. Much of the luxuriant moss and lichen draped forest of the Gulf plains with all its primitive network of shrubs and vines still remains.
The Prairie Plains.—A prairie in the current use of the term is a generally level region, either a plain or a plateau, without forests but clothed with a carpet of luxuriant grasses and flowering annuals. A rolling prairie is an undulating or hilly, grass-covered region. ”