OCR Text |
Show THIS FAVORED REGION. Last winter was unusually long and cold, the spring was a month late in coming, and a good many of us have growled at the unpropltlous weather; but compared with the rest of the Republic, Re-public, the West has been especially favored. A dozen cyclone? have smitten the old West and South; the floods in the Missouri valley have been unprecedented; the loss of property has been awful, while the persons killed and wounded have exceeded in numbers the results of an ordinary ordi-nary battle between warring armies. There have already been many heat prostrations in the East, and above the present wreck in the great valley of the Missouri there is threatened a loss of the great corn crop on which the region depends for not only Its annual profits, but upon which in many places the very homes depend. Farther south there have been floods that have devastated the plantations and broken the hopes of the planters. In this basin there have brsn some losses of live stock, but this is about all. The mines have not lost a day's work; the farmers are exulting over the prospect of a luxuriant harvest, at last the skies have driven away their clouds and all the warring elements have hushed their wrangling. Certain it is that nowhere in the Union are so many pleasant days in the year as in the re- H gion which the geographies of a few years ago had B marked, "The Great American Desert"; no other B place where men every day in the year can work K comfortably; no other place where the rewards B of toil are richer. All in all, this should be a K thankful as well as a contented people. jB |