Will Ashford, Daniel Stouffer, and Emma J. Leach planted those groves. The first two have "gone on" and the latter now lives at Long Beach, California. These are in Banner county development, but they are nevertheless a part of the tree planting story of the Panhandle. Ten miles east of this road the editor-in-chief planted his several thousand trees that grew and thrived so long as the place was under his care. They may be there now.

Others in Scotts Bluff county who have substantial groves to their memory from the old tree culture law are Charles Robinson and S. S. Videtto.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

"Sons of Martha"

When surveyors invaded the Indian country, the red men were first struck with fear and superstition. When they invaded the cattle country, the cowmen were distinctly annoyed. But the surveying went on and the settler came and occupied the land. They are the base of our present day civilization and prosperity. Foremost among Nebraska's "Sons of Martha" is Robert Harvey, the present state surveyor. He has put a lifetime into the work, the most of which was in western Nebraska. He made long trips into the Indian country and among cow ranches. He had all kinds of adventures with Indians, with men of unfriendly natures, with prairie fires, and with storms of early years.

Equipping his parties on the lower Loup (or Wolf) river, he would journey for long trips into the western part of the state. When the country traversed became too sandy, or for any cause the wheeling was too heavy, the party would make a cache of a part of the provisions, to pick them up at a later date in case of need. Owing to the danger of other parties finding the cache and appropriating the goods to their own use, or destroying them, it was necessary for them to obliterate all traces of the hiding place, and trust to memory to again find the same.