Historical Geography of Russian America

cold, drought, soil blowing, and footrot , was replaced in first place by spring wheat. Since 1929, consequent upon the fact that the long time average yield of spring wheat is less than that of winter wheat, the latter has again taken first place. Long continued drought has resulted in serious shortage of soil moisture and of water for human and livestock consumption. If water shortage becomes much more acute some sections will be uninhabitable because of lack of water. Irrigated acreage is slowly expanding ; but, because of unfavorable geographic factors, it can never coà sti— tute a large proportion of total farm acreag-e. Nearly every farm, however, could have enough irrigated acreage to be self-supporting. Divrsified farming has developed slightly. Easy credit and the psychology of the wheat farmer—a determination to live on 30 days' work a year—expanded wheat acreage. Inflated credit, mortgage indebtedness, over-investment in land and machinery , and government aid kept it expanded until relentless drought and depression forced contraction. Now, ?. high proportion of farmers are awaiting the first opportunity to return to strictly commercial, mechanized wheat farming, and thus overexpand wheat acreage once morb. Severe soil blowing constitutes a mo.st serious problem in Basin agriculture . Over large areas, particularly in the south and west, it has prac-, tically destroyed the soil. Elsewhere it is an important factor in decreasing soil productivity. Land abandonment, a response to original shallow soil cover and to soil blowing, has taken place extensively in the south and west. On South Bench abandonment began four years after settlement and is now almost complete. In bottomlands of streams in the central portion, heavy, compact, alkaline soils have caused considerable abandonment. Wheat acreage should be reduced, on the whole, about 50 per cent. Then despite disadvantages cited, because of slight climatic advantages, level topography, fertile soil, and better water supply, Judith Basin will remain one of the best ranching and farming areas in the northern Great Plains. Historical Geography of Russian America WILUS B. MEEKIAM Eastern Washington College of Education, Cheney, Washington. Historians of the Pacific Rim have long recognized that Alaskan history through the days of Russian occupation was more a closing chapter of Russian expansion than an opening chapter of new world development. Threads of the Slav race to the Pacific extend as far back as 1573 when a punitive expedition against a band of offending Cossacks started a population movement eastward that came only to a momentary rest on Kamchatka Peninsula in 1713. The natives of Kamchatka had no knowledge of America, hence it was by local evidence that the Russians deduced that there must be land lying to the eastward. Perhaps no other part of the globe remained in such confusion and uncertainty as did the North Pacific during the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. Arm-chair cartographers had the Pacific plastered with mythical Straits of Anian separating Asia and America, as well as numerous legendary islands. Cartographic speculation, coupled with the reports from the Russian traders on the east coast of Siberia, caught the fancy of Peter the Great, and impelled him, as one of his last official acts, to sond out an expedition in search of any passage that might exist between Asia and America. He chose Vitus Bering, a Dane in the service of the (18) Russian navy, to head the expedition. It took Bering six years, from 1725 to 1731, to cross Siberia with his supplies , build a boat, sail up to East Cape which had already been visited Ly land, and report back to St, Petersburg his conclusion that Asia and America were separated. The Empress Catherine, Peter's successor, was favorably impressed, hrwever, and ordered a second expedition to carry out the rest of the original plans. In June of 1741 two small ships were launched from Kamchatka and the second expedition was inaugurated . The two ships kept together for a few days, then partly due to bad weather and partly to ill feeling between the chief and his aide, they separated. Chirikof, the commander of the assisting vessel, actually discovered Alaska on July 15 near the present southern boundary. Bering first saw land the...