Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1887 — DRY AND HOT. [ARTICLE]

DRY AND HOT.

Disastrous Effects of the Long-Pro-tracted Drought in the Mis* * sissippi Valley. [Chisago telegram.) The Tribune, in an editorial on the protracted drouth, says: “Still the rain holdsoff, and the drouth is severe. People in the city, with a full supply of lake water and a lawn sprinkler at the command of every householder above the poorest grade, can have little idea of the condition of things on the many thousands of sqnare miles which constitute “the country in the great Mis-issippi Valley. All over the West, with here aud there a little oasis-like exception, the land is parched dry and the subsoil moisture has long since been sucked. out of it by the f-corching rays of a midsummer sun. No rain 0: any consequence has fallen since the hot weather set in, and the situation is all the worse as a smaller quantity of moisture than usual fell during the winter, and very little in the spring months. The streams have given ou: and the wells run dry. Human beings are reported to be unable to obtain water unless by hauling it several miles, and the cattle are moaning in the fields because it is impossible to give them a good supply. Corn is wilting under the heat, the leaves firiug, and the incipient cob 3 shriveling. The grass was cut over large areas early in June, a light j’ield being taken off in the hope that a good second crop should be cut; but there has been no rain since, and consequently no crop. Cattle are said to be turned into the standing corn already, because that is the only available way of using it for feed, as the stalks would soon be 100 dry for that purpose, and. the ears arc believed to be gone.