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uplift of the ocean floor caused the shore-line to migrate westward, driving the ocean waters before it. Simultaneously with this uplift, thick deposits of Permian formation were distributed over the state.

As the water thus receded the westward pockets and basins of the old seafloor were left filled with ocean water. As these lakes and ponds in time evaporated, the process of concentration occurred and, as a result, beds of gypsum were deposited. This is the rock gypsum. Earth gypsum, found in Dickinson, Salina, Marion, Butler, and Sedgwick counties, is well mixed with silt, clay, etc., and is supposed to be a re-deposition from streams or springs whose waters had been in contact with the soluble gypsum rock.

Gypsum rock is largely distributed in Comanche, Barton, Kiowa, Salina, Dickinson, and Marshall counties. It is also found in Marion, Harvey, Sedgwick, and Sumner counties.

Cement plaster is manufactured at Blue Rapids, Dillon, Rhodes, Longford, and Medicine Lodge. The chief step in its manufacture is the process of heating the gypsum rock to drive out the water.

Salt, like gypsum, is a deposition of saline waters. In the production of salt, Kansas is the fourth state, being surpassed only by New York, Michigan, and Ohio. In 1910 Kansas produced 2,800,000 barrels of salt. Hutchinson, Lyons, Kanopolis, and Kingman are engaged in salt manufacture.

BUILDING STONE AND CLAY

Limestone and sandstone are of commercial importance as building material. Kansas is generously supplied with rock deposits of excellent quality. The commercial value of rock depends, among other qualities, upon

1. The ease with which it can be quarried.

2. Its color and texture.

3. Its durability.

Building stone of excellent quality is found in many parts of the state. Geary, Riley, Cowley, and Chase counties have fine quarries.

Valuable clays are found in many parts of the state. There are different varieties and the supplies are practically inexhaustible.

Pure clay is a compound of aluminum, silicon, and oxygen combined chemically with water. Such clay is called kaolin. The term "clay" as commonly used applies to any soft earthy substance capable of assuming any desired form and retaining that form during the process of burning. Fire clays are found underneath coal beds. Their position is explained by the fact that the vegetable growth that was converted into coal extracted certain elements from the soil in which it grew, thereby leaving a stratum of under-clay of such physical and chemical properties as to withstand, without melting, the high degrees of heat necessary to burn it.

The clay output is in the form of tile and vitrified brick. Large quantities of these products are shipped from Cherryvale and Coffeyville.

While we are more likely to think of corn, wheat and live stock in contion with the great state of Kansas, it must be apparent from the above ements that the earth products are also of great importance.

DEATH VALLEY

By George D. Hubbard

Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

DEATH is selected United States. It was not made by a stream

EATH Valley is selected as a type of a structural feature common in the

and perhaps ought not to be called a valley at all. Neither is it in general a death-dealing place, but received its name because of the fatally disastrous results which its lack of drinking water visited upon a lost gold-mining party hastening to the Sierra gulches in 1849. Death Valley has often been said to contain carbonic acid gas and by this means to suffocate its visitors, but the ravine which fills with carbon dioxide is Death Gulch in Yellowstone Park and not this much larger valley in California.

Like a hundred other depressions in the Great Basin, Death Valley owes its origin to two processes: (a) the faulting and displacement of blocks of stratified and igneous rocks, and (b) more or less erosion on the resulting forms. Approximately parallel faults, or cracks with displacement, extend through the basin region from southern California completely into Oregon. Along some of these cracks the vertical movement has been very great. Some blocks of rock have been shoved up, others have been dropped down; some have been tilted and some have been more or less crushed. Thus the characteristic forms of the Great Basin are long, rugged, rocky, serrate ridges or mountain ranges with a steep slope on one side and a gentler one on the other, rising above, and more or less completely shutting in, elongate often curved and crooked, deeply aggraded depressions. Many of these have no exterior drainage. Some would contain lakes and would overflow if the rainfall were slightly increased. Some contain temporary or intermittent lakes which may be either fresh or salt, and when salt, either with common salt or carbonates or borax or with several salts mingled.

LOCATION

Death Valley lies in the eastern part of Inyo County, south western California, bounded on the west side by the Panamint mountain range and beyond the mountain Panamint Valley, and bounded on the east side by the Amargosa range, divided by east and west cols into short sections which are named from north to south Grape Vine, Funeral, and Black Mountains, three short ridges which make up the larger range. The state boundary between Nevada and California lies along the eastern part of this range. Death Valley is from five to twelve miles wide and one hundred and twenty-five miles in length, markedly constricted about one third of the way from the north end. It has no outlet to the sea. This valley happens to be the result of the dropping down of one block with reference to its neighbors, so that the floor of the valley, in spite of the extensive subsequent filling, now lies farther below sea level than any other portion of the United States not covered by water. More than five hun

dred square miles of the floor lie below sea level and the lowest point is at least two hundred and eighty feet beneath that level.

DESCRIPTION

Following these general lines given in the previous paragraph, many details ornament the valley. In many places because of the broken strata in the walls of the valley spring waters issue, and run down the slope toward the bottom to be soaked up by the sands at the foot. Some of these springs are of fresh, cool, thirst-slaking water; others are salty, with common table salt and borax, and others have even less agreeable substances. Some of the springs are very warm and are said to be boiling. Occasionally a spring has been found to be very injurious to man and has been marked as a "poison" spring. In a number of places, wells have been dug. Not many of these furnish water suitable for drinking, but they may be of value as sources of salt.

The walls of the valley are ribbed by erosion valleys and divide crests, both of which rise rapidly to the tops of the bounding mountains. Down these ravines, when rain falls, the water rushes with great velocity, sweeping stones and gravel and sand out upon the valley floor. Consequently the floor is very well covered with sand and stones, but because the valley has no outlet and the water which runs into it usually contains salt which is left behind upon evaporation of the water, the sand is thoroughly mixed with quantities of salt. A considerable stream leads into the valley at the south end from Amargosa Valley which lies to the east. This water is brackish when it enters, and during rainy weather accumulates on the floor of the valley to a depth sometimes of many feet, forming a temporary lake of thousands of acres. These waters dissolve the salt already on the floor of the valley, mingle them with the salts brought in, and when the water again evaporates, which must necessarily take place in so dry a climate, the salts are again left on the valley floor. Several tracts are covered with a snow-white, glistening mantle of salt, producing extremely smooth salt flats. In other places the salt is less disturbed by the waters and has become broken up by re-crystallization until the salt surface is rough to travel over. Of course, these salt areas occupy the lower portions of the valley and just beyond them, along the valley sides are the mud flats, where the edges of the waters lie when the valley becomes flooded.

In rainy weather these mud flats become muddy and sticky, but in dry weather both sand and mud and salt are blown about more or less by the winds. It is believed that a much larger stream than the Amargosa formerly entered this valley, from the Mohave desert, leaving its waters in the depression to evaporate. Consequently, there may have been a very considerable lake at former stages in the history of Death Valley, but any record of such a lake, either in shore lines or in beds of salt, is completely covered by the later, less organized deposits. Many craggy cliffs overlook the valley from the divides between the little laterals that lead down into Death Valley. These are more or less wind-carved, and grooved, and bear fantastic names appropriate to their forms.

CLIMATE AND VEGETATION

Shut in by mountains and lying in the lee of the great Sierras which rise 10,000 feet above sea level across the approaching Westerlies, Death Valley can receive but little rain from the west, even in winter when conditions are most favorable. In summer the valley lies in the high pressure belt of calms and in the beginnings of the Trades whose only course has been across as arid lands as the valley itself, hence very little rain can come in summer time. The total rain fall in the valley rarely exceeds five inches in a year and averages less than half that amount. Over the surrounding slopes the precipitation is a little greater, but is nowhere sufficient to promote the growth of much vegetation. Mesquite grows over small areas or in clumps here and there. Grass is very rare. Upon the bordering slopes there is a larger variety of tree. growth and some shrubs and scanty grass but much of it dries down during the heat of summer.

The depth of the valley and lack of water for evaporation and consequent cooling give the depression in this latitude a high summer temperature. With the dryness and heat and the winds that often blow strongly here, the sand, dust, and salt greatly harass the traveller.

CULTURE

One would think that such a place as Death Valley would be rather devoid of culture, but it has been visited considerably by man, and to its peculiar geographic complexities many adjustments have been made. Adjustment is often more necessary in such places than in more favored localities. Wagon roads run the entire length of the valley with stops at some of the springs and wells, where water can be had. An automobile road runs through the Amargosa Valley and sends a branch through a low pass into Death Valley. Branch roads lead off from the main road through the valley, up many of the ravines and gulches to springs and in a few cases to mineral deposits. The wells will probably some day be pumped and the water from them evaporated to recover the potash which is universally associated with the salt in the valley. This potash is an essential plant food and will be used in the manufacture of fertilizers.

At two points in the valley borax works have been constructed and some of this salt is being recovered for commercial purposes. Probably, however, the common salt is by far the most valuable of the mineral resources of the valley; but in as much as there are many other places where salt can be recovered without encountering so great physical hardships, as must be overcome here, the salt of Death Valley may not be extensively used.

The valley can be visited easily at almost any time of year by travelers on the Santa Fe or Union Pacific Railroad by taking the Tonopah and Tide Water Railroad which connects these two main lines and passes through the Amargosa Valley some fifteen miles east of Death Valley. Of course, no such valley as this can ever be of any particular value for agriculture, grazing, forestry, or in fact for permanent settlements of any kind unless there should

come a great climatic change. The region is so low and is nestled down between such elevated mountain chains that it is very warm and also very dry, but it is slowly being filled up by the wash from the sides; and the time can not be far away, physiographically speaking, when Death Valley shall not be below sea level, but perhaps many feet above. As this grading-up process advances, the extreme heat will be reduced and a valley trench leading out may be established, so that the saltiness can be reduced and then possibly some agricultural use can be made of the place.

Its chief interest today centers in the fact that its floor lies farther below sea level than any other ground in America. But aside from this fact, Death Valley can be duplicated by scores of valleys, perhaps equally large and equally interesting, throughout the Great Basin.

FRANCE: ITS NATIONAL DEFENSE*

By Onesime Reclus

Translated by Dr. A. N. Winchell, University of Wisconsin

HE situation of Europe requires that France should be strong, neither attacking nor provoking any country. She has no one to fear. In order to carry out this program, she counts on the valor of her army and navy and on the strength of her frontiers. Secondarily, she counts on her allies and her friendships.

In spite of the variations in sentiment and interests which sometimes unite the powers and sometimes arm them against one another, the national defense need not consider all the possibilities of conflict nor be prepared for defections. At the present time France is supported by the Russian Alliance and the English friendship, and directs her efforts against the strongest and most dangerous power of the Germanic-Italic-Austrian Alliance-the German Empire. Assuming the conflict between the forces of the Triple Alliance and those of the Triple Entente, we should have to contend with not only the German active army of 876,000 men, but the 300,000 men of the active Italian army, and the 400,000 men of the active Austrian army. On our side we could count upon the 1,470,000 of the active army of Russia, but upon those only, because it is not probable that England, if it was brought into the conflict, would consent to divert its army of 425,000 men against Holstein or Hanover or even Flanders (in case Germany should violate the neutrality of Belgium) and create there a diversion. With its fleet it may be able to do more or less; its superiority, still undisputed, over anyone of the European fleets would assure us freedom on the seas.

After 1870, French strategy had at first no other objective than the protection of its territory against a new invasion of Germans, and to accomplish this used only the one method of the construction of lines of forts between

*From an article by Onesime Reclus published in the "Atlas de la Plus Grande France," a short time before the present European War.

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