Milk River

“ It would be doing the resources of a great and vast area of Montana injustice if reference were not made to the Milk River country, the great Indian reservation of 17,680,000 acres in the northern part of the State which has recently been open to settlement. This region has not been examined by the author, but from conversations with a number of its well-informed inhabitants it appear that the soil is very fertile, and that during average moist years excellent crops can be raised there without irrigation. ”

“ Quite possibly the presence of the springs was decisive in enabling both the Mosses and Fountain Beattie to make dairying a substantial part of the farm’s operations. In the 1830’s, many of the types of equipment and utensils typically used in making and preserving butter, cheese, and fresh milk were listed in inventories of personal property at the farm. During this period and later, the presence of the Little River Turnpike would have made it feasible to sell dairy products regularly in Alexandria, six miles away, and in the District of Columbia, nine miles away. ”

“ Unless there are several towns on the route, of over one thousand inhabitants, it would be well to carry sufficient provisions of a simple sort for the entire trip, for supplies are difficult to obtain at small villages, and the quality is apt to be poor. Farmhouses can generally be depended on for eggs, butter, and milk,—nothing more. For drinking-water, obtainable from farm-wells, carry an army canteen, if you can get one; if not, a stone jug will do. The river water is useful only for floating the canoe, and the offices of the bath. ”

“ In the basin of the Green River, fifty miles south of Fillmore City, is a fine wool-producing country 7000 square miles in area. Even the ubiquitous sage will serve for camels. As has been mentioned, Durhams, Devons, and Merino tups have found their way to Great Salt Lake City, and the terrible milk-sickness [9] of the Western States has not.
In 1860 the Valley of the Great Salt Lake alone produced 306,000 bushels of grain ”

“ For several months of the year not a single shower moistens its foliage. Its branches then appear dead and dried; but when the trunk is pierced, there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The negroes and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow and thickens at its surface. Some empty their bowls while under the tree itself; others carry the juice home to their children. ”

“ But the Orange County farmer no longer makes such disposition of his milk. To both himself and his wife, butter-making is a lost art. Besides he is no longer a farmer but a "dairyman"' or "milk producer," for his principal business is to supply the market with milk, What farming he does is merely a side issue.
The beginning of these changed conditions dates back to 1842, when the Erie railroad, then hardly out of its swaddling clothes, carried to New York the first consignment of milk that ever reached that city by way of a transportation line. ”

“ The milk is all kept in great big pans in long rows. It's very cool inside, for the milk-house is built over a spring that bubbles away all the time, running out of the old stone milk-house down to the meadows, where the cows drink it and the little fish swim in it. I know, because one time when my right forefoot was hurt they put me out in the meadow and many a good drink I've had from that same little brook. The bottom is all bright little stones, and the ferns hang over the edge of the bank, and the little birds hop down and drink. Oh, it's very pleasant out there in the meadow. ”

“ As a result of these impressive showings, many local farmers shied away from general farming and began to put their energies into milk production; new farmers were drawn to the area specifically for the possibilities in dairy farming. Of ten families interviewed in the Floris area, all save one connected their family's removal to Fairfax County to the combination of transportation ease and excellent prices afforded by the Washington milk market. ”

“ He said it was seven years since any Sioux had visited the mill; and that the latter was owned by persons at Prairie du Chien.
The rapids of the Red Cedar River extend (according to the estimates contained in my notes) about twenty-four miles. They commence a few miles below the junction of Meadow River, and terminate about two miles below the mills. This extension of falling water, referred to in the treaty as a fixed point, has led to the existing uncertainty. The country itself is of a highly valuable character for its soil, its game, its wild rice, and its wood. ”

“ To the left of the mill, with its green turf-clad dam and placid gleaming pond, wandered off green fields of many shading colours, through which ran the Mill Creek, foaming as if enraged that it should have been even for a brief space paused in its flow to serve another's will. Then, beyond the many-shaded fields, woods again, spruce and tamarack, where the stream entered, and maple and beech on the higher levels. That was one way to the mill, the way the farmers took with their grist or their oats for old Charley Boyle to grind. ”

“ Marin County offers some important advantages to the dairy-farmer. The sea-fogs which it receives cause abundant springs of excellent soft water, and also keep the grass green through the summer and fall in the gulches and ravines. Vicinity to the ocean also gives this region a very equal climate. It is never cold in winter nor hot in summer. In the milk-houses I saw usually a stove, but it was used mainly to dry the milk-room after very heavy fogs or continued rains ”

“ Rigid rules of cleanliness are carried out in every detail with the greatest exactness. The house and the animals are cared for all the time as if on inspection. Before milking, the udders are carefully brushed and washed, and the milker covers himself entirely with a clean apron. As each cow is milked, the milker hangs the pail on a spring balance and registers the exact weight on a blackboard. He then carries the milk through the door that leads to the dairy-house, and pours it into a tank on wheels. ”

“ Probably more than a hundred affluents of various capacities, deriving their waters from the amphitheater of snow-clad mountains which rise on all sides from 3000 to 4000 feet above its surface, contribute their quota to supply this Lake. The largest of these affluents is the Upper Truckee River, which falls into its southern extremity.
The only outlet to the Lake is the Truckee River, which carries the surplus waters from a point on its northwestern shore out through a magnificent mountain gorge, thence northeast, through the arid plains of Nevada, into Pyramid Lake. ”

“ Apart even from the manifold merits of the tree that bears it, the milk itself has many and great claims to our respect and esteem, as everybody who has ever drunk it in its native surroundings will enthusiastically admit. In England, to be sure, the white milk in the dry nuts is a very poor stuff, sickly, and strong-flavored and rather indigestible. But in the tropics, cocoa-nut milk, or, as we oftener call it there, cocoa-nut water, is a very different and vastly superior sort of beverage. ”

“ The old milk farm here under the hill below me, with its tumbling barn and its ninety acres of desolation, was sold not long ago for six thousand dollars. The milkman will make more money than the clam man, but he will have no more. The milk farm is a larger undertaking, calling for a larger type of man, and developing larger qualities of soul, perhaps, than could ever be dug up with a piddling clam-hoe out of the soft sea-fattened flats. ”

“ The only people who, through their employments, knew the interior well were the Indians and half-breed hunters. It was the statements of these, therefore, and of the few prosperous farmers and stockmen scattered here and there, which afforded us our only reliable knowledge.
The most extensive prairies adjacent to the Upper Peace River are those to the north already described. The nearest on the south side are the prairies of Spirit River, a small stream which divides several townships of first-class black, loamy soil, well wooded in parts, but with considerable prairie. ”

“ The farmer and some of his family went home with the dairy-man, and found the milk like it often is in summer when the buck (spittle-fly) is on the grass, that, so it is believed, makes milk curdle then without becoming sour. The farmer and his wife couldn't tell what to think of milk being in that state early in spring; he took home the cow, however, and let the dairy-man have another, and when she was milked by Jemmy her milk 'runned' too, like that of the former one, which was then all right in the master's dairy. ”

“ This river is a post of trade, containing a population estimated at three hundred and eighty-two souls. The lands are fertile, and afford in connection with Ottawa Lake, and the adjacent country, a good location for a mission and school. The river originates near the head of Long River of the Red Cedar Fork of the Chippewa, to which there is a canoe portage. It expands at unequal distances, beginning at its source, into Lac Vaseux, Rice Lake, and Yellow Lake. Wild rice is one of its productions, and is among the means of subsistence on which the natives rely. ”

“ I have frequently visited my aunt’s dairy; and the operations there are so new to one just fresh from a country where cows and dairy are but little attended to, that I take constant interest in them. “And the milkmaid singeth blithe” is now a familiar image to me; formerly it was only from your description I understood it. How is it that such a precious gift as milk can be overlooked in any part of the world, particularly in one that abounds with cattle as Brazil does ”

“ A portage of only two miles in length connects Prairie Rice Lake with this river, and the foot of the portage, or the spot where it strikes the river, is twenty miles above its outlet into it. The lake being miry-bottomed, and shallow, is almost entirely covered with wild rice, and so thick and luxuriant does it grow, that the Indians are often obliged to cut passage ways through it for their bark canoes. From the manner in which they gather the rice, and the quantity which a family generally collects during the harvesting season, this lake alone would supply a body of two thousand Indians. ”

“ I was perfectly delighted, because I got more milk from Winnie than either Gibbie or Dab has been getting. When I was in the mountains one summer I took regular lessons in milking, for the mountain folk milk beautifully, whereas the negroes are generally poor milkers. They never can take all the milk, and if you do not keep the calf to take the balance when the milking is over, the cow will go dry in a very short time. Leave a pint to-day and to-morrow there is that much less, and so on, a pint less every day. The cow is soon only fit to turn out to pasture. ”

“ The volume of water afforded by the Timpan-ogo is probably equal to that of the Sevier river; and, at the time of our visit, there was only one place in the lake-valley at which the Spanish fork was fordable. In the cove of the mountains along its eastern shore, the lake is bordered by a plain, where the soil is generally good, and in greater part fertile; watered by a delta of prettily timbered streams. This would be an excellent locality for stock-farms; it is generally covered with good bunch-grass, and would abundantly produce the ordinary grains. ”

“ Vegetable strata of this kind are produced, not only upon dry land by the growth and decay of forests, but also beneath the waters of lakes and estuaries, by the accumulation of Drift-timber borne along in the current of swollen rivers. The Mackenzie River, which drains a great part of Northwestern America, affords many admirable illustrations. Flowing as it does from south to north, it is subject to annual inundations when the snows begin to melt in the higher parts of its course, while the channel lower down, situated in colder latitudes, is still blocked up with ice. ”

“ In the dairy one man has to carry out all the dairy operations, and here the churning is always finished before the milking begins; but in the case of the ordinary buffaloes, where many take part in the work, the two operations may go on simultaneously, and while one man or boy is churning, others will be milking the buffaloes and carrying the milk into the hut. Usually it seemed that each of the males of the family was taking his part in the proceedings.
FIG. 16.—THE MORNING MILKING AT THE VILLAGE OF MOLKUSH. IN THE BACKGROUND IS A MODERN ‘TU’ MADE OF WOODEN PALINGS. ”

“ Milk, however, may always be procured in great quantities and at a cheap rate.
About half way up Cape Verd is a large lake, the water of which is brackish, though formed by a rivulet which is perfectly fresh. It is difficult to explain the cause of this singularity. Some suppose that the bottom of the lake consists of a nitrous earth, which communicates its flavour to the water; while others think, and perhaps with more reason, that the sea water filtrates through the ground, and mixes with that of the lake. ”

“ A bulletin issued by the Agricultural Department of our government, just as we go to press, shows that there are at present in Alaska 12 farms, four oxen, 13 cows, 176 chickens, 10 pigs, several cases of pneumonia and numerous games of "freeze-out." During the fiscal year there was harvested in Alaska $165 worth of hay, $95 worth of eggs and poultry, and a big crop of ice. There are certain advantages of farming in Alaska. In harvest time, for instance, a man never sweats at work. He markets his milk frozen and sells it by the hunk. You never hear of anybody crying over spilt milk in Alaska. ”