The trail of the Loup; being a history of the Loup River region . Ofthese all but the latter yet flourish and form the bulk of all our wildforage grasses. The sorghum grass is by many experts picked as Ne-braskas most nutritious native grass. In early springtime it is not easyto distinguish it from bluejoint; when, however itsrussetlike spikeletsin acompact panicle make their appearance, all danger of such mistakesdisappear. It is very hardy and if cut just before frost, makes splendidhay. Blue joint grows ranker than the foregoing, the stem when fullgrown is fiom four to five feet high and is
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The trail of the Loup; being a history of the Loup River region . Ofthese all but the latter yet flourish and form the bulk of all our wildforage grasses. The sorghum grass is by many experts picked as Ne-braskas most nutritious native grass. In early springtime it is not easyto distinguish it from bluejoint; when, however itsrussetlike spikeletsin acompact panicle make their appearance, all danger of such mistakesdisappear. It is very hardy and if cut just before frost, makes splendidhay. Blue joint grows ranker than the foregoing, the stem when fullgrown is fiom four to five feet high and is surmounted by acluster of fourto six straight, rigid and hairy spikes, from three to five inches long, andof a purple color. GLIMPSES OF THE NOETH LOUP VALLEY 65 The famous buffalo grass once grew over the whole region between theMissouri and the mountains. > It formed the chief food of the buffalo andhas ever been favorite with all kinds of domestic stock. This nutritiousgrass, too well known to need description, is curiously enough rapidly DO c 3 D Oo s. disappearing from the plains, and is in our state threatened with totalextinction. In the Loup valley where it used to be so abundant now onlyisolated patches are found, and these in depressions and alkali spots. Manytheories have been advanced to explain this disappearance, occurring as 66 THE TRAIL OF THE I,OUP it did contemporaneously with that of the buffalo. The :most commonsense explanation seems to be that change of climate, especially increaseof rainfall, had most to do with this phenomenon. The Loup was formerly a veritable paradise for game and carnivorousbeasts. The monarch of all the game roaming here was the bison (BosAmericanus), popularly known as the buffalo. Almost incredible storiesare told by early settlers and freighters across the plains about the size ofherds they so often encountered. Thus we hear of Buffalo Bill estimat-ing a certain herd at 500,000. By 1872 the large herds had already left thevall