A^^ 't. .■^'' .^ ^J-• \v /•'#^ s o. ,^^ ^^. 0%" o^ -0' ^0O^, o 0' ?/, * .0 N .^^ -% V s- r> tP \x ^v <. X^' "^^,- "^^ ,s;> A ^■^ ^^ \ .^ c ° '^ '-' %^ -^ * <, vOo^ AN OYERLAND JOURNEY, NEW YOUK TO SAN FEANCISCO, THE SUMMER OF 1859. liOR^^CE GS-REELiir;^'. N E W Y R K : » C. M. SAXTON, BARKER & CO SAN FRANCISCO: H. H. BANCROFT & CO. 1 860. ^^1 Entered, according to the Act of Congress, ir. tlie year ISGO, by HORACE GEEELE^, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New Yorl; C. A. ALVURD, PIUNTEK, NEW YORK. PREFACE The following letters, as is generally known, were written to The New Yoek Tribune during a journej through Kansas, Utah, and California, last summer. 1^0 one can he more conscious than the writer that they present the slightest possible claims to literary merit or enduring interest. Their place is among the thousand ephemeral productions of the press on which the reading public, if good-natured, bestows a kindly glance, then charitably forgets them. Ten years hence, hardly a hundred persons will be able, without sustained effort, to recollect that these letters were ever printed. Hurriedly written, mainly in wagons or under the rudest tents, while closely surrounded by the (very limited) appliances and processes of pioneer meal-getting, fur from books of reference, and often in the absence of even the com- monest map, they deal with surfaces only, and these under circum- stances which preclude the idea of completeness of information or uniform accuracy of statement. The value of such a work, if value it have, must be sought in unstudied simplicity of narration, in tlie freshness of its observations, and in the truth of its averments as transcripts of actual experiences and current impressions. By consulting and studying the reports of eminent official ex- plorers and pioneers, from Lewis and Clark to Fremont and Lander, who have traversed the Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Basin, a far more complete and reliable book might have been made, but one extending to several volumes, and of which the public does not seem to stand in conscious, urgent need. That herewith sub- mitted, though of far humbler pretensions, has at least the merit of owing little or nothing to any other. If any excuse for printing these letters were wanted, it might be found in the fact that much of the ground passed over by the writer was absolutely new— that is, it had never before been traversed and described. The route up Solomon's Fork and the upper portion of 4: PREFACE. the Republican, from the forks of the Kansas to Cherry Creek ; that from Denver to the gold-diggings in the Rocky Mountains, near Ralston's fork of Clear Creek ; the trail from Denver to Laramie, along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains ; and that from Salt Lake southwestwardly through central Utah to Pleasant Valley, and thence northwestwardly to the Humboldt at Gravelly Ford, are be- lieved to stand in this category. But another reason for printing these hasty sketches is found in the fact that very great and rapid changes in most of the region lying directly between Missouri and California are inevitable. The Leavenworth Express route, through the heart of what in June is the Buffalo region, which was hardly four weeks old when I traveled it, was soon after abandoned, and has reverted to the domain of the wolf and the savage; while the rude beginning of a settlement I found, scarcely three weeks old, at "Gregory's Diggings," has since been "Mountain City," with its municipality, its newspaper, and its thousands of inhabitants; and is now in its decline, having attained the ripe age of nearly half-a- year; Captain Simpson has, since July, completed his exploration of a military and mail route through Central Utah, whereby more than a iiundred miles of that I traveled are saved and the detested Humboldt wholly avoided; and Carson Valley, under the impetus of rich mineral discoveries, is rapidly increasing in population and consequence, and about to stand forth, the nucleus of the embryo Territory of Nevada. Whoever visits California a few years hence, will doubtless find it greatly changed from the California so hastily run over but faithfully described by me in August, 1859. Should, then, a few copies of this book, lost in the dustiest recess of some all-embracing, indiscriminate library, evade the trunk-makers to the close of the next decade, the antiquary of 1870 may derive gratifi- cation if not instruction from a contrast of the ' populous, enterpris- ing, and thrifty Central North America of his day, with that same region overrun and roughly depicted by me in the summer of 1859. Should such prove tlie fact, I commend my hasty letters to his generous indulgence. H. G. New Yokk, Nov. 1, 1S59. CONTEi\TS AN^ OVERLAND JOURNEY. From New York to Kansas, 7 Notes on Kansas, 20 More Notes on Kansas, 35 More of Kansas, 48 Summing up on Kansas, 61 On the Plains, ........ 71 The Home of the Buffalo, 80 Last of the Buffalo, 86 The American Desert, 98 Good Bye to the Desert, 107 The Kansas Gold Diggings, 115 The Plains — The Mountains, 128 The Gold in the Rocky Mountains, . . . . 139 "Lo, the Poor Indian," 149 Western Characters, 157 From Denver to Laramie, 166 Laramie to South Pass, 182 South Pass to Bridger, 190 From Bridger to Salt Lake, . . . . , . 198 G CONTENTS. Two Hours with Brighara Young, .... 209 The Mormons and Mormonism, 219 Salt Lake and its Environs, 230 The Army in Utah, 245 From Salt Lake to Carson Valley, .... 258 Carson Valley — The Sierra Nevada, .... 275 California Mines and Mining, 283 California— The Yoseniite, 295 California— The Big Trees, . . ... 310 California Physically Considered, 322 California — Its Eesources, 334 California — Summing Up, 344 California — Final Gleanings, 361 Railroad to the Pacitic, . 368 AN OVERLAirt) JOURNEY. FROM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. Atchison, Kansas, May 15, 1859. I LEFT New York by Erie Eailroacl on Monday even-' ing, 9tli inst., just as our fortnight of bright, hot, plant- ing weather w^as closing. Two hours later, the gathered clouds burst upon us in a rain w^liich continued through the night, though the city was not refreshed by it till some hours later. "We had glimpses of sunshine as we skirted the southern shore of Lake Erie on Wednesday, and some more after a heavy shower at Chicago on Thursday; beside these, cloudy skies, easterly winds, and occasional rain, have been my portion since I bade adieu to the hot, dusty streets of Isew York. But it is breaking away as I write, and I hope to see Kansas, for the first time, under skies which image her sunny future rather than her stormy past. Coming up the Erie Koad, I tried a " sleeping-car"^ for the third time, and not very successfully. We all " retired" at ten o'clock, with a fair allowance of open windows and virtuous resolutions ; but the rain poured, 8 FKOM NEW YOKK TO KANSAS. the night was chill and damp ; and soon everj orifice for the admission of external air, save the two or three humbug ventilators overhead, was shut, and a mephitic atmosphere produced, in which the soul of John G. Saxe might have disported and fancied it elysium. After gasping a while, like a netted fish on a hot sandbank, I rose to enter my solemn protest against all sleeping-cars not provided with abundant and indefeasible means of ventilation. I tried one, two nights later, on the Michi- gan Southern Road, which served much better, though still far from perfect. It is very true that no arrange- ment can secure a healthy circulation of air by night in any passenger-car, while the popular ignorance is so dense that the great majority imagine any atmosphere healthful which is neither too cold nor too hot, and rather laugh at the wit than pity the blindness of Saxe in holding up to ridicule a w^oman who knows (and does) better than to sit all night in a close car, with thirty or forty other human beings, all breathing an atmosphere which they, in twenty minutes, render absolutely pois- onous; but the builders of cars have no right to be ignorant of the laws of life w^ith which they tamper; and two or three presentments by Grand Juries of tlie makers of unventilated cars, especially sleeping-cars, as guilty of manslaughter, would exert a most salutary influence. I commend this public duty to the imme- diate consideration of jurors and prosecutors. Stopping at Hornellsville, at seven next morning, 3 took the train for Buifalo thence at noon, and halted at Castile, to fulfill an engagement to speak at Pike, for- mei-ly in Alleghany, now in Wyoming County. FKOM NEW YOKK TO KAITSAS. \) I left Pike for Castile at five on Wednesday morning ; took the cars to Buffalo at half-past seven ; was in ample season for the Lake Shore train at ten ; ran into Cleve- land a little after five ; left at six for Toledo, where we changed cai's between ten and eleven, and w^ere in Chi- cago at seven next morning as aforesaid. Along the south shore of Lake Erie, as in our own state, it was plain that the area plowed on or before the 11th of May was greater this year than ever before. And well it might be ; for the country was hardly ever so bare of food for man and beast as in this same May of 1859. Flour is higher and wheat and corn scarcely lower in Chicago than in New York or Liverpool ; oats nearly the same. Thousands of cattle, throughout the Prairie States, have died of starvation this spring, though prairie hay might almost anywhere have been put up last fall at a cost of less than two dollars per ton ; Min- nesota, with, perhaps, the best soil for winter wheat in America, is buying flour in Chicago by the thousand barrels ; and I hear from different sections of this great granary of nations — from Illinois, from Iowa, from Mis- souri — of whole neighborhoods destitute alike of bread and of the wherewithal to buy it. Unpropitious as last season was, it does not fully explain this scarcity, espe- cially of fodder. I trust the like will never occur to need explanation again. Coming down through Illinois from Chicago south- westwardly to Quincy (268 miles) it was gratifying to see how general are the effort and obvious resolve to look starvation out of countenance this year. Thongh the breadth of winter wheat was but moderate, owing 1* 10 FROM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. to the incessant rains of last autumn, it is plain that the farmers began to plow and sow as early as possible this spring; putting in, first, spring wheat, then oats, latterly corn ; and they mean to keep putting in corn and oats for a month yet. If Illinois and Iowa do not grow far more grain this year than ever before, it will hardly be the fault of the cultivators, for they are bent on doing their utmost. Considering their bad fortune last year, this resolute industry does them credit ; but they are generally in debt, out of money and almost out of credit, and are making a final stand against the sheriiF. I heartily wisli them a good deliverance. And, despite the hard times, Illinois is growing. There are new blocks in her cities, new dwellings in her every village, new breakings on this or that edge of almost every prairie. The short, young grass is being cropped by large herds of cattle, whose improved ap- pearance within the last fortnight is said by those who have observed them from day to day to be beyond cred- ence on any testimony but that of eye-sight. Here, every horse or ox that can pull is hitched to a 2)low or harrow whenever darkness or rain does not forbid ; and, by plowing the dryest ridges first and seeding them ; then taking the next dryest and serving them just so, nearly every cultivator can keep putting in seed at least four da,ys> per week from March till June. Many will plant corn this year till the middle of June, and even later, unless compelled sooner to desist in order to com- mence cultivating that first planted. Then cultivating will require every hour till harvesting begins ; and this (including haying) will last till it is full time to plow for FKOM NEAV YOKK TO K^VNBAS. 11 winter wheat. No busier season was ever seen than this is to be ; fi-oin the Hudson to the Mississippi, you see four horses or oxen at work to one in pasture; and there are thousands of farmers who w^ould plant or sow a quar- ter more, if they had grain to feed their teams, than they will now be able to do. There are few traveling in the cars, few idling about stores or taverns, but many iij the fields. May a bounteous Heaven smile on their labors ! Illinois is just beginning to be cultivated. I presume she has no railroad along which half the land within a mile has ever been touched by a plow. Back from the roads, there is of course still less cultivation ; probably less than a tenth of her soil has ever yet been broken. Possibly one-fourth of her spontaneous product of grass may now be eaten by animals that contribute to the sus- tenance or comfort of man, though I think one-sixth would be nearer the mark. She has far more coal than Great Britain — I believe more than any other state — but has hardly yet begun to mine it. Her timber is not 60 excellent ; she lacks pine and all the evergreens, but she is bountifully and cheaply supplied with these from Michigan and Wisconsin. Boards are sent through her canal from Chicago to the Illinois, and thence around by St. Louis and up the Missouri to build houses in Kansas and Nebraska. Her timber, such as it is, palpably in- creases from year to year, and will increase still more rapidly as roads and plowing check the sweep of prairie- fires. If her prairies were more rolling, they would be dryer and could be worked earlier; but then they would wash more, and probably have less depth and richness 12 FliOM NEW YOKK TO KANSAS. of soil. Doubtless, the child is bom who will see her a state of ten millions of people, one million of them in- habiting her commercial emporinm. 1 stopped over night at Quincy, and took the steam- boat Pike at half past seven next morning for Hannibal, twenty miles below. I had repeatedly crossed the Mis- sissippi, but this was my first passage on it. The river is very high, so that its banks are submerged, and the water flows under the trees which line either shore. Islets covered with trees and shrubbery abound ; the bluffs recede some miles on either hand, and are soft- ened to the view by the deep green of the young foliage ; hardly a clearing breaks the uniformity of the almost tropical prospect; though here and there a miserable little hut in the last stages of decay tells where a chop- per of steamboat-wood held on until whisky or the ague took him off". In flood, as it is, the river is turbid, not muddy, and pursues its course with a deliberation and gravity befitting the majestic Father of Waters, to whoni, with head bare and reverent spirit, I wave a re- spectful adieu. For our good boat has reached Hannibal, the first point below Quincy at which the Missouri bluff ap- proaches the river, and whence the valley of a streamlet makes up through the hills to the broad, level prairie. Hannibal is pleasantly situated on the intervale of the creek and up the side of the bluff, so as to be entirely commanded by a steamboat passing up the river. It is a bustling, growing village of some four thousand in- habitants, which the new "Hannibal and St. Joseph Eailroad " has suddenly raised from local to general im- FKOM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. 13 portance. Like most villages on the great western rivers it has no wharf, and the river is now threatening to eat away a part of the bank on which railroad and steam- boat freight is heaped in wild disorder. Its new conse- quence must soon work a change. I look for a wharf and a great storehouse when I next land or embark here. The Pike rounded to, and sent us ashore ; the train backed down to within forty feet of her ; the passengers got aboard the cars and were followed by their baggage, and in half an hour we were steaming up through the woody ravine to emerge on one of the largest prairies on northern Missouri. Across this — or, rather, along it — we took our course westward, almost as the crow flies, to St. Joseph on the Missouri, two hundred tind six miles distant, which we reached in a little more than twelve hours, or at half-past ten last evening. The road was completed in hot haste last winter, in order to profit by the " Pike's Peak " migration this spring ; no gravel is found on its line, unless in the immediate vicinity of the Mississippi ; and it was raining pitilessly for the second day nearly throughout, so that the road- bed was a causeway of mortar or ooze, into which the passing trains pressed the ties, first on one side, then on the other, making the track as bad as track could well be. A year hence, it must be better, even with the frost just coming out of the ground ; after a dry week, it will probably be quite fair ; but yesterday it afi"orded more exercise to the mile than any other railroad I ever trav- eled. About one-third of the way from Hannibal, it is intersected by the "North Missouri Eailroad " from St. 14 FKOM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. Louis, wliicli city is about one hundred miles further from St. Joseph than Hannibal is ; the train from St. Louis starting: at five a. m. to connect with ours which o ought to have left Hannibal at half past nine. Each road is completed, so that St. Louis as well as Hannibal is within a day's ride by rail of St. Joseph, which faces Kansas almost up to the Nebraska line. Though the day was dreary, I noted with deep interest the countr}^ through whicli we passed, which disappoint- ed me in these respects : 1. The land is better than I had supposed ; 2. It is of more uniform grade — hardly anything worth calling a hill being seen after rising the bluff from the Mississippi till we come in sight of the bluffs which enclose the Missouri ; 3. There is more prairie and less timber than I had expected ; and 4. There are infinitely less population and improvement. Of course, this road w^as run so as to avoid the more settled districts, and thus to secure a larger allotment of the public lands whereof the alternate sections for a width ' of five or six miles were granted to the state in aid of its construction ; but I had not believed it possi- ble to run a railroad through northern Missouri so as to strike so few settlements. Palmyra, near the Mississippi, and Chillicothe, a hundred miles further west, are county seats and villages of perhaps two hundred dwellings each ; beside these, there is no village of any size, unless it be one of those we passed in rain and dark- ness as we neared the Missouri. For some fifty miles after passing Palmyra, we traversed a level prairie, admirably grassed, but scarcely broken, save where the needs of the railroad had called up two to half a dozen FEOM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. 15 petty buildings. Yet, for most of the way, timber was in siglit on one side or on both, often within a mile ; and the soil, though but a thin, black mold resting on a heavy clay, therefore not so well adapted to grain as prairie soils are apt to be, is admirably Utted for stock- growing. It seems incredible that such land, in a state fort}^ years old, could have remained unsettled till now. We traversed other j^rairies, five to twenty miles long, separated by the richest intervales skirting Grand River and sundry smaller streams, well timbered with elm, hickory, etc. Interposed between the prairies are miles on miles of gently rolling ridges, thinly covered with white oak, and forming " oak openings " or " timbered openings," while a thick growth of young wood, now that the annual fires are somewhat checked by roads and cultivation, is coming forward under the full-grown oaks, the whole forming one of the most beautiful and inviting regions I ever passed over. They tell me that the rolling prairies near St. Joseph, to which we passed after dark, are richer and finer than those I saw ; but they surely need not be. With such soil and timber, the Mississippi on one side, the Missouri on the other, and a railroad connecting them, it must be that north- ern Missouri is destined to increase its population speed- ily and rapidly. I am sure beef can be made there at less cost per pound than in any other locality I ever visited. St. Joseph is a busy, growing town of some ten thousand inhabitants. It is beautifully situated on a bend of the Missouri, partly on its intervale (which the river is gouging out and carrying away), and partly on 16 FEOM NEW YOEK TO KANSAS. the southward slope of the bluff, which rises directly from the river bank, at the north end of the town. Other towns on the Missouri may have a grander future ; I doiibt that any has a finer location. The river bank must be piled or docked, or in some way fortified against the boiling current which sets against the town-site with fearful power and effect. I believe tliis is further west than any other point reached by a raih'oad connecting eastward with the Atlantic ports. At all events, the travel and part of the trade of the vast wilderness watered by the Upper Mis- souri and its tributaries, seem to center here. At the City Hotel, where I stopped, some of the guests were of, and from Salt Lake; one, an Indian trader from the head waters of the Columbia, who came down the Yellow Stone from the Rocky Mountains last fall in a canoe, and is now returning. Army ofiicers and sutlers for the forts far up the Missouri and its tributaries, are constantly arriving and departing. I may never see St. Joseph again, but she will long be to me a pleasant rec- ollection. Elwood, in Kansas, opj)osite, is a small place, which must grow with the country behind her. The mighty, boiling flood, which is tearing away the soil of St. Joseph, is piling up new bars and banks in front of, and just below Elwood, rendering approach to her wharf (if wharf she has or should have) difiicult for river steamboats, and thus shutting her out iVom the up- river trade. I took passage from St. Joseph for this place at eight this morning on the good steamer Platte Yalley, Captain Coursey, and defied the chill east wind, and damp, cold FROM NEW TOKK TO KANSAS. IT atmosphere, to take my first lesson in Missouri naviga- tion. The distance by water is some forty miles; by land considerably less ; the river being here, as every- where, crooked and capricious. I regretted to note that it tends, if unchecked, to grow worse and worse ; the swift current rapidly forming a bank below every pro- jecting point, and thus setting the stream with ever- increasing force against the yielding, crumbling mold or silt of the intervale which forms the opposite shore, which is thus rapidly undermined and falls in, to be mingled with and borne away by the resistless flood. The banks are almost always nearly perpendicular, and are seldom more than two or three feet above the surface of the water at its present high stage, so that the work of devastation is constantly going on. The river is at once deep, swift, and generally narrow — hardly so wide in the average as the Hudson below Albany, though carrying the water of thirty Iludsons. It cannot be half a mile wide opposite this city. Its muddiness is beyond all description ; its color and consistency are those of thick milk porridge ; you could not discern an egg in a glass of it. A fly floating in a teacup of this dubious fluid an eighth of an inch below the surface would be quite invisible. With its usually bold blufi's, two or three hundred feet high, now opposing a rocky barrier to its sweep, now receding to a distance of two or three miles, giving place to an intervale, many feet deep, of the richest mold, usually covered by a thrifty growth of elm, cotton-wood, etc., its deep, rapid, boiling, eddying current, its drifting logs and trees, often torn from its banks by its floods, and sometimes planted afresh in its 18 FKOM NEW TOEK TO KANSAS. bed, so that the tops rise angularly to a point just below or just above the surface of the water, forming the sawyer or snag so justly dreaded by steamboats, the Missouri stands alone among the rivers of the earth, unless China caw show its fellow. I have not yet learned to like it. Atchison gives me my first foothold on Kansas. It was long a Border-Ruffian nest, but has shared the for- tunes of many such in being mainly bought out by free, state men, who now rule, and for the most part own it. For the last year, its growth has been quite raj)id ; of its four or five hundred dwellings, I think, two-thirds have been built within that period. The Missouri at this point runs further to the west than elsewhere in Kansas ; its citizens tell me that the great roads west- ward to Utah, &c., from St. Joseph on the north and from Leavenworth on the south, pass within a few miles of Atchison when thrice as far from their respective starting-points. Hence the Salt Lake mail, though made up at St. Joseph, is brought hither by steamboat and starts overland from this place; hence many trains are made up here for Laramie, Green River, Fort Hall, Utah, and I hear even for Santa Fe. I have seen sev- eral twelve-ox teams, drawing heavily-loaded wagons, start for Salt Lake, etc., to-day ; there are others camped just outside the corporate limits, which have just come in ; while a large number of wagons form a corral (yard, inclosure or encampment) some two miles westward. A little further away, the tents and wagons of parties of gold-seekers, with faces set for Pike's Peak, dot the prairie ; one of them in charge of a grey-head who is FEOM NEW YORK TO KANSAS. 19 surely old enough to know better. Teamsters from Salt Lake and teamsters about to start, lounge on every cor- ner ; I went out three or four miles on the high prairie tliis afternoon, and the furthest thing I could see was the white canvas of a moving train. I have long been looking for the West, and here it is at last. — But I must break oiF somewhere to prepare for an early start for Leavenworth and Lawrence to-morrow, in order to reach Osawatamie next day in season to attend the Repub- lican Convention which is to assemble at that place on "Wednesday, the eighteenth. n. NOTES ON KANSAS. Lawrence, Kansas, 3£ay 20, 1859. It resumed raining in Kansas, after a few dry days, on Thursday, tlie 12tli inst., and rained "off and on'" till Saturday night. Sunday, the loth, was cloudy and chilly, but without rain, until evening, when thunder- showers came up from every side, and kept flashing, rumbling, and pouring nearly throughout the night. Kansas brags on its thunder and lightning; and the boast is well founded. I never before observed a dis- play of celestial pyrotechny so protracted, incessant and vivid as that of last Sunday night. The country, al- ready saturated with water, was fairly drenched by this deluge, which rendered many streams ordinarily insig- nificant either dangerous or for a season impassable. At 6 A. M. on Monday morning, four of us left Atchi- son in a two-horse wagon, intent on reaching Osawat- amie (some eighty miles rather east of south — one hun- dred by any practicable route) next evening. The sky was still threatening ; we knew that the streams were swelled beyond reason ; but our pilot was a most experi- enced pioneer, who had forded, been ferried over or swam every stream in Eastern Kansas, and w^as confi- dent of his ability to go through by some route or other. So we went ahead in a southerly direction, across swells of prairie rather steep-sided for Kansas, and through NOTES ON KANSAS. 21 ravines in which what were usually rills w^ere swelled into torrents. From the high level of the prairies, little but a broad sweep of grass on every side was visible ; but soon we were descending into a new ravine, and now belts and spurs of timber were seen, generally widening as they tend toward the Missouri. I noted that these woody spurs, composed mainly of black-oak and cotton- wood (the latter a very poor but quick-grow- ing timber, ranging somewhere between poplar and basswood), began to spread on every side wherever the annual fires were repelled from the adjacent prairie, whether by the interposition of a road or otherwise, and that the young trees that thus spring up along the sides of the ravines and run out into the level prairie, are quite often hickory, white ash, etc., even where none such are visible among the adjacent timber. I was fully convinced that wood becomes more abundant with the progress of settlement and cultivation. Of course, there is timber enough to-day in the Territory ; but the better portion of it is too generally confined to the intervales of the larger streams, too far for their comfort from most settlers on the prairies. Could prairie-fires be wholly arrested, the increase of timber would overbalance ten- fold the annual use and waste ; and the quality improves even faster than the quantity. This is real progress. For, though there is quite enough in Kansas, and a pretty good variety of all species except the evergreens, which are lamentably deficient, there are points at which there is none within several miles — the little that formerly ran up the small ravines which here cut in upon the great high prairies being soon exhausted by 22 NOTES ON KANSAS. use for building, fuel, and fencing, and requiring years for its reproduction. Twelve or fifteen miles south of Atchison, we struck the great California trail from Leavenworth, and tlience followed it east by south into that city, some fifteen to eighteen miles. I should have liked Gerrit Smith as one of our party, that I might show him the practical working of his theory that Government has no other legitimate business than to keep one man's fingers ofi' another man's throat and out of any pocket but his own. The great California trail, like the Santa Fe and all other primitive roads through this prairie country, keeps along the highest " divides " or prairie swells, avoiding the miry '' bottoms " of the streams and (so far as possible) the ravines which the water falling on the high prairie has cut down to them, of course winding considerably, but making the best and most serviceable natural road that can be, and one that in dry weather is excellent, and in wet as good as possible. But each settler along this trail, in the absence of any legal estab- lishment of the trail as a highway, is at liberty to run his fences right across it as the line of his land runs, and so crowd it ofi" the high "divides" into all manner of angles and zigzags, across this ravine and into that slough, until the trail is fast becoming the very worst road in all Kansas. I have had a pretty full ex23erience of bad roads during this week ; but the very worst and miriest was that portion of the California trail (and United States military road from Fort Leavenworth west to other forts) which works its sinuous way through the region generally settled by thrifty farmers, lying NOTES ON KANSAS. 23 directly west of Leavenworth. And the worst hill for teams I have seen in Kansas is traversed by this road within five miles of Leavenworth, between the fort and the rich but mirj valley of Salt Creek on the west. This road, unless it can be restored, will soon have to be abandoned, and thence Leavenworth must sufi"er. As we neared the California trail, the white coverings of the many emigrant and transport wagons dotted the landscape, giving the trail the appearance of a river running through great meadows, with many ships sail ing on its bosom. Most of the independent wagoners were still encamped by the wayside, unable or unwilling to braTC the deep mud; their cattle feeding on the broad prairie ; the emigrants cooking or sitting beside the wagons ; women sometimes washing, and all trying to dry their clothing, drenched and soaked by the pour- ing rain of the past night. One great wagon-train was still in corral with its cattle feeding and men lounging about ; the others might better have been, as it was clearly impossible to make their lean, wild-looking oxen (mainly of the long-horned stripe, which indicates Texas as their native land, and which had probably first felt the yoke within the past week) draw them up the slightest ascent through that deep, slij)pery mire. A great deal of yelling, beating, swearing, was being ex- pended to little purpose, as I presume each train cor- raled for the ensuing night within a mile of the point it left in the morning. These contractors' wagons are very large and strong, each carrying a couple of good extra axles lashed under its body, to be used in case an old one gives way under a heavy jerk; the drivers are 24 NOTES ON KANSAS. as rough and wild-looking as tlieir teams, tliongli not quite so awkward at tlieir business ; but to keep six yoke of such oxen in line in the road, and all pulling on the load, is be^^ond human skill. It is a sore trial to patience, that first start of these trains on their long journey — to Utah, Fort Hall, Green iiiver, and some of these to New Mexico, thougli this is not the Santa Fe traiL The loads are generally lifty hundred weight; the wagons must weigh at least fifteen hundred each ; and, though this would seem moderate for twelve oxen, it must be remembered that they are at this season poor and at first unbroken, and that the road is in spots a very bad one. A train consists of ten to thirty wagons ; each train has its reliable and experienced master or director; and when a team is stalled, another is un- hitched from its own wagon and sent to the aid of the one in trouble. The rate of progress is necessarily snail- like ; these trains will do very well if tliey make twenty miles the first week, considering the weather. But then the feeding of the teams (like the lodging of the men) costs nothing, as they live on the broad prairie, and though they will often be fearfully hungry or dry in traversing grassless tracts on their route, they are said generally to gain in flesh (for which there is ample room) during a journey of three or four months. Of course, they improve in docility and effectiveness, being at first so wild that, in order to be yoked, they have to be driven into the corral (formed, as I may have ex- plained, by the wagons closely ranged in hollow square, the tongue of each being run under its next neighbor, for defense against Indians or other prowlers). Yery NOTES ON KANSAS. 25 few wagons or cattle ever come back ; the freigliting is all one way ; and both wagons and cattle are nsuallj sold at or near their point of destination for whatever they will fetch — to be taken to California or disposed of as they best may. We drove into Leavenworth City about 11 a. m., and found that the delegates from this county had generally given up the idea of reaching Osawatamie, judging that the Convention would have to be ad- journed or postponed on account of the swollen and im- passable streams. Stranger Creek barred all egress by w- ay of Lawrence, which we had intended to make our resting-place for the night ; a creek nine miles south of Leavenworth had turned back the stage running in that direction ; in fact, no stage made its w^ay out of Leaven- worth that day in any direction which was not forced to return, baffled by the high water. So at 3 p. m. we shipped our horses and wagons on board the steamboat D. A, January, and dropped down the Missouri some fifty miles, past the bleaching bones of several dead cities (not including Quindaro, which insists that it is still alive) to Wyandot, in the lower corner of Kansas, with Kansas City, Missouri, three miles off, in plain sight across the mouth of the Kansas or Kaw River. Yf yan- dot, though hemmed in and impeded, like Quindaro, by an Indian reserve back of it, is alive, and is becoming, what it ought fully to be, the outlet and inlet between Southern Kansas and the Missouri River. It has a beautiful location, and decided natural advantages over Kansas City, which, with other Border-Ruffian strong, holds south of it, has hitherto engrossed too much of the 26 NOTES ON KANSAS. travel and trade of Kansas. We halted at "Wyandot over night, had an improptn Kepnblican gathering and some off-hand talk in the evening, and set forth at six next morning for Osawatamie (forty-six miles a little west of south by a bee-line, but over fifty by any prac- ticable ronte), which we were desirous of reaching before night, as the Convention was to be held next day. Our route led south-west over rolling woodland through the Wyandot Reserve, descending into the bot tom of the Kansas or Kaw Kiver — said bottom being from one to two miles wide, and very heavily timbered with elm, yellow oak, black walnut, hickory, cotton- wood, sycamore, basswood, etc. Nearly all tlie rivers and larger creeks of Kansas run through similar bot- toms or intervales, from half a mile to three miles wide, and timbered much like this. These intervales are composed of a dark, rich mold, oftener over than under three feet in depth, but they are so level that they could hardly be cultivated without drainage, even were it advisable to strip them by wholesale of timber, as it decidedly is not. The houses and barns that shall yet thickly dot the adjacent prairies are now mainly grow- ing in these bottoms, and should stand there as trees till they are wanted. When cleared and drained — and in some places the rotting out of the stumps, and thorough plowing thereafter will go far toward effecting the drain- age required — they will yield bounteous crops of al- most anything that does not dread frost. Though it seems hardly possible that their soil should be richer than that of the prairies, it is deeper, and probably con- NOTES ON KANSAS. 27 tains a more varied and choice admixture of the ele- ments of vegetation. But the Kansas or Kaw bottom was not only soaked but covered with water — for it had rained here smartly only the preceding morning after it ceased at Atchison, and the road across the bot- tom was for the time an all but impassable morass. 1 trust the citizens of Wyandot will not long leave it thus. We crossed the Kaw on a fair wooden toll-bridge, one thousand two hundred feet long, just erected — or, rather, not quite comj)leted. In default of a toll-house or gate- keeper, a man at work on the bridge in his Jiirt-sleeves, took the toll. I believe no other bridge across the Kaw is now standing, though there has been one at Topeka, fifty miles up, and perhaps at other points. Bridges are sorely needed throughout Kansas, not only because the streams are addicted to rapid and vast augmenta- tions from thaws or rains, but because their banks are almost perpendicular, and often miry toward the bot- tom, while the streams are nearly as deep at either shore as in the middle, making the attempt to ford difficult, even when it is not dangerous. The Kaw was, of course, nearly full (all the rivers of Kansas have low banks), and was running very swiftly ; still, it seems of moderate size, for a river which leads about six hundred miles westward of its mouth ; but all the rivers of this region, the Missouri included, seem small, considering the area drained by them. The facts that they run rapidly, are apt to be deep, and that their depth is nearly uniform from side to side, account in part for this appearance. 28 NOTES ON KANSAS. Half an hour after crossing the Kaw, we emerged from the road and the Reserve upon the high prairie, the clouds of the morning broke away, and the day was hencefortli perfect. The young grass of the prairie, re- freshed by the heavy rains, appeared in its freshest, ten- derest green ; the delicate early flowers were abundant, yet not so numerous as to pall by satiety the pleasure of looking at them, and the panorama presented was mag- nilicent. Passing Shawnee, a prairie village of twenty or thirty houses, with a large hotel, our road bore more directly south, and soon brought us in sight of the great Santa Fe trail, with its white-toj)ped, emigrant wagons, and three great contract trains, one of them still in corral^ the others with six pair of mules to each wagon, attempting to make progress toward New Mexico — at- tempting it, for the most ]3art, in vain. The mules were small, and new to work — to tJds work, at all events — and drew badly ; while the wheels cut so deeply into the yielding paste beneath them that little or no advance was made. I presume they all corraled for the night within two miles of the places where we saw them. Crossing the trail almost at right angles, we left the smart village of Olathe (county seat of Johnson county) a mile or so to the west, and struck olf nearly due south, over high prairies sloped as gently and grassed as richly as could be desired, with timber visible along the water- courses on either hand. Yet there was little or no set- tlement below Olathe — for the next twenty miles that we traveled there was hardly an improvement to each four square miles of the country in sight. And yet, if the Garden of Eden exceeded this land in beauty or NOTES ON KANSAS. 29 fertility, I pity Adam for having to leave it. The earth was thorouglily sodden with rain, so that temporary springs were bursting out on almost every acre, while the water-courses, including those usually dry, ran heavy streams, each of them requiring skill in the charioteer and good conduct on the part of the horses to pass them without balk or break. We must have crossed over a hundred of these "runs" in the course of this day's travel, each of them with a trying jerk on the carriage, and generally with a spring on the part of the horses. These water-ways have generally a lime- stone bottom not far below the surface of their bed ; but their banks are apt to be steep, and are continually growing more so by reason of the water washing away the earth which has been denuded of grass and worked loose by hoofs and wheels. Traveling by jerks like this is not so pleasant as over a macadamized road, yet our day was a bright and pleasant one. Thirty miles of progress, twenty of them over prairie, brought us to Spring Hill, a hamlet of five or six dwell- ings, including a store, but no tavern. Oar horses needed food and rest — for the wagon with its four in- mates, was a heavy drag over such going — so we stopped and tried to find refreshment, but with limited success. There w^as no grain to be had, save a homcepathic dose sold us for a quarter by a passing wagoner, and thank- fully received ; we gave this to our steeds, regaled our selves on crackers and herring, and pushed on. Our direct route led due south to Paoli, county seat of Lykins ; but persons we met here assured us that there was no crossing Bull Creek on this road, and that 30 NOTES ON KANSAS. we must bear away to the west through Marysville (a village of perhaps a dozen houses, including a store and a tavern), so as to cross at Rock Ford, three miles be- yond, which opened the only chance of getting over. We did so, and crossed in safety, with the usual jokes when we were fairly over; but I confess that the wide, impetuous stream, so impenetrable to the eye, and so far above its average level, wore a vicious look to me when we approached and plunged into it. Its bottom is here hardly half a mile wide, but is capitally wooded with hickory, oak, black-walnut, etc. Emerging from it, we rode over twelve miles more of high, gently roll- ing jorairie, with wood in the ravines on either side, which brought us to the village of Stanton (of twenty or thirty houses, including two stores and a tavern) which we reached before sunset, having traveled at least fifty miles since we started in the morning. [N'ight and the Marais des Cygnes — here brought us to a halt — the creek being at this time impassable — and we had to forego our determination to reach Osawatamie before sleeping. So we halted at the little tavern, where we found five or six others bound to Osawatamie, like our- selves, at least one of whom had swam three creeks since the morning. Fifteen or twenty others drove up during the evening; we had supper, a neighborhood meeting and a Republican talk at the school-house, and adjourned to fill all the beds and floors of the tavern as full as they could hold. The kind, active, efficient land- lady did her best, which was good, enough; and all were snugly bestowed except another editor and myself, who accej^ted the kindly proffered hospitality of a Re- NOTES ON KANSAS. 31 publican farmer, and were capitally entertained at his house, half a mile distant. As night fell, the lightning had begun to gleam and flash nearly around the horizon ; by ten o'clock, the thunder rolled ; at twelve, a high gale could be heard sweeping over the prairies some moments before it struck us. The lightning blazed almost incessantly for hours ; yet the rain-fall at Stanton was very slight. But there were heavy showers at Marysville, at Paoli, and almost everywhere else around us, still further rais- ing the streams, so that many who had come part way were unable to reach Osawatamie next day. "We were early on the bank (a mile from Stanton) of the Marais des Cygnes, which was running heavy drift- wood, and otherwise misbehaving itself. It had buried up the ferry-rope, without whose aid the boat could not be propelled across its sweeping current ; one of the trees to which that rope was attached was now nearly in the middle of the stream ; and there had been no crossing for a day or two. But a new rope had been procured and somehow stretched across the stream ; whereby we were taken across in our turn, after waiting somewhat over an hour. A mile or so of well timbered and too well watered bottom brought us again to prairie, over which we drove rapidly into Osawatamie, which w^e reached before ten a. m. Osawatamie is a village of at most one hundred and fifty houses, situated in the forks of the Marais des Cygnes and Potawatamie, a somewhat smaller creek, which comes in from the south-west. The location is a pleasant and favorable but not a commanding one ; the 32 NOTES ON" KANSAS. surrounding country is more considerably cultivated than any I had passed south of the Kaw. The two creeks supply abundant and good timber ; an excellent steam sawmill has taken the j)lace of that which the border-ruffians burned ; a flouring mill, tannery, brew- ery and a large hotel, are being erected or completed. I presume there is a larger towm somew^here in what is known as Southern Kansas, though I do not know which it is. But Osawatamie has a higher interest than any other spot in Kansas, except possibly LawTcnce, because of her honorable eminence in the struggle which has secured Kansas to free labor. She was long the only settlement near the Missouri border "which was avow- edly, decidedly free-state ; the only free-state village that could be reached by a night's march from Missouri. To be known as a free-state man at Topeka, Waubonsee, Emporia, or any other post well inland, involved strug- gles and sacrifices ; to be one at Osawatamie, was to live in nightly and well-grounded apprehension of rob- bery, arson and murder. The pro-slavery settlements in the neighborhood were strong and malignant; and they had only to draw upon Missouri at sight for any amount of force, and the draft would be honored. Yet to surrender this outpost was virtually to give up all Kansas south of the Marais des Cygnes ; and, though its maintenance was sure to cost property and blood, it was not surrendered, for Old John Bkown was among its early settlers. Twice was it sacked and laid in ashes, once after a desperate fight of two hours, in which Old Brown with forty of his neighbors held at bay four hun- NOTES ON KANSAS. 33 dred well-armed Missourians, wlio had the advantage of a cannon. So fearfully outnumbered, Old Brown, after seeing his son and several of his neighbors shot dead by his side, and after killing at least as mau}^ Missourians as there were of his own party altogether, was gradu- ally driven back through the open timber north of the village, and across the Marais des Cygnes, the ruffians not venturing to pursue their victory, though they had attacked from the west, and so were driving the free- state men toward Missouri. The women and children had meantime fled to the woods on the south; the village was burned after being robbed, the only iron safe therein having been blown open by firing a cannon into its side, and so plundered of some silver-ware and a considerable sum in money Osawatamie was thus a second time "wiped out." But it has risen again from its ashes, and is once more the home of an undaunted, freedom-loving people, who are striving to forget their bereavements and sacrifices in view of the rich fruits they have borne to liberty and human good. They have gathered the dust of their martyred dead into a common grave on a prairie-knoll just west of their village, and proj)ose to erect there a monument Vvdiich shall teach their children and grand- children to love and cherish the cause for which those heroes joyfully laid down their lives. I beg leave to suggest an enlargement of the scope of this enterprise — that this monument be reared to all the martyrs of free- dom in Kansas, and that the name of each be inscribed upon it, and his mortal remains, if his relatives make no objection, be placed beneath the column which shall 2* 34. NOTES ON KANSAS. here be reared as a memorial of the struggle which secured Kansas to free labor, and is destined finally to hasten the expulsion of slavery from Missouri. Should a monument be proposed on this basis, I feel confident that subscriptions in aid of its erection might reasonably be asked of all who prefer freedom to slavery, and would not be asked in vain. m. MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. Leayenworth, May 23, 1859. The convention at Osawatamie was of course very slow in assembling, and I think not more than half the organized counties were represented at all. Hardly any were present from the southern counties, for whose ben- efit that place of meeting had been selected. Those who did come got there by swimming many dangerous creeks ; but from most localities attendance was a phy- sical impossibility. Ferry-boats are scarce in Kansas, bridges, of course, nearly unknown ; and the water runs off these rolling prairies so rapidly that a stream which a three-year old child might ford at night will be run- ning water enough to float a steamboat before morning. Obviously, there can be no ferries maintained on such ; and, until bridges can be erected, those whose way lies across them have no further alternative when they are in flood than either to swim or wait. But to swim an angry, turbid, rushing torrent, perhaps a dozen rods across, and running drift-wood in a perfectly reckless manner, is a job requiring nerve and skill ; so the great- er number have simply to stay at home or camp on the bank, and wait until the flood runs out, which it usually will in twelve to thirty-six hours, according to the size of the stream, unless the rain or thaw continues. But it had rained nearly half the time for a week prior and 36 IMOllli NOTES ON KANSAS. np to the eigliteentli, so that few even of those who sup- posed the convention would be held could reach it. Yet there gathered on the afternoon of that day nearly a thousand of the pioneers, mainly of the immediate neighborhood, to whom, in an interlude of the conven- tion's discussions concerning their organization and plat- form, I had the satisfaction of setting forth the repub- lican faith as I understand it, and by whom it was heartily received. It was a labor of love so to speak, but rather a tax to write the speech out, even imperfect- ly, as I was obliged to do during the next two days in the intervals of riding and speaking, in order that all those people of Kansas who care to do so may consider my notions of " Free-State Democracy " and " Squatter Sovereignty." The twin curses of Kansas, now that the border- ruffians have stopped ravaging her, are land-speculation (whereof the manufacture of paper-cities and bogus corner-lots, though more amusingly absurd, is not half so mischievous as the grasping of whole townships by means of fraudulent pre-emptions and other devices familiar to the craft) and one-horse politicians. Many of these latter were driven into the free-state movement by the enormity of the border-ruffian outrages, by their own terror or indignation, and by the overwhelming force of public sentiment ; but, being essentially dema- gogues, they gravitate irresistibly toward the sham- democracy, in whose embraces the whole tribe will bring up, s-ooner or later. Their prototype is Mr. 11. Miles Moore of this city, who, after having been one of the noisiest and most conspicuous free-state men in MOEE NOTES ON KANSAS. 37 1855-6, after having been driven down the river by tlie border niffians, who gave him his choice between leav- ino^ Kansas and instant death, and after haviiio^ been once strung up by the neck by them and choked till nearly dead, is now hard at w^ork trying to put Kansas once more into their hands, and figuring in conventions and on committees with those who didn't quite hang him, as fellow democrats ! His case reminds me strong- ly by contrast of that of the man who "observed that, for the first month after marriage, he loved his wife so that he wanted to eat her, while ever since he had wished he had. The controlling idea of the one-horse politicians is that the republicans must not let their adversaries have a chance to raise the cry of " nigger " against them — that hence they must be as harsh, and cruel, and tyran- nical, toward the unfortunate blacks as possible, in order to prove themselves " the white man's part}^," or else all the mean, low, ignorant, drunken, brutish whites will go against them from horror of " negro equality." To which I reply that this sort of cattle are against the rejDublicans any how, and never can be permanently otherwise. They may be driven by circumstances to vote once or twice with us, but the virus of sham- democracy is in their blood, and must come out. That democracy, from long practice and an experience that it pays, can dive deeper, stay under longer, and come up nastier, in this business of negro-hating, than any other party that ever was or ever can be invented. There is nothing that more strikingly exposes the radical base- ness of slaveholdinof than the fact that its votaries so 38 MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. hate those whom they have long injured, that, beaten in their desperate struggle to force negroes into Kansas as slaves, they now turn a short corner and insist that, if they cannot come in as slaves, they shall be shut out, and even driven out, altogether. I apprehend that it will be necessary for the republi- cans of Kansas, in view of the inveterate western pre- judices of a large portion of her population, to concede, for the present, that the right of suffrage shall be exer- cised only by white males, or men of European lineage, excluding, on account of their imperfect moral and in- tellectual developments, Indians, negroes, and their descendants. Further than this, I would not go, no matter how great the inducement. Leave the democrats alone in their glory, when they come to propose and sup23ort — as they are certain to do — propositions that negroes shall be expelled and excluded from Kansas — ■ shall be precluded from testifying against a white man — shall be debarred from attending schools frequented by white children, etc., etc. Let any city or district that sees fit, make adequate provision for the education of colored children by themselves ; but, in default of this, let the schools be open to all who need their minis- trations. Such, I hope, will be the determination of republicans generally ; and, if Kansas has to be lost in consequence, then let her go ! I left Osawatamie on the morning of the nineteenth, in the Lawrence stage, crossing the Marais de Cygnes at Bundy's ferry (where we crossed the day before), and finding the water considerably lower, though still over its regular northern bank, and the access on either side MOEE NOTES ON KANSAS. 39 most detestable. Passing Stanton, we kept still west of north into the Ottawa Reserve, so as to leave a mail at Ottawa Jones's, where we struck due north to Prairie City, leaving Peoria City and Ohio City some miles distant on our left, either upon or near the Marais des Cygnes. (It takes three log houses to make a city in Kansas, but they begin calling it a city so soon as they have staked out the lots.) I stopped at Prairie City and talked to a republican gathering of four hundred people, though where on earth so many could have been scared up, within a reasonable ride of this point, one who merely runs over the country could not imagine. True, we had here "Prairie City," "Baldwin City," and " Palmyra " in a string, all within three miles ; but they could not all have mustered half this audience ; and I was forced to conclude that the country is really better peopled than it seems to a mere traveler — that, while the favored roads traverse the high " divides," or middle of the prairies, in order to avoid, so far as possi- ble, the miry bottoms and water-courses, the settlers are nested in the edge of the timber, and down the water- courses, where fencing and fuel are far more accessible. The country I traversed between Stanton and Prairie City was a little more rolling, and considerably better timbered, than that between Shawnee and Stanton, already described. The oaks often covered considerable tracts of upland, while young timber was visibly spread- ing on all hands, under cover of the universal hazel- bushes of those Kansas uplands which are not burned over every year. Our next post-office above Jones's was Hickory Grove, which reminds me that I saw more good 40 MOEE NOTES ON KANSAS. jnckorv tliis day 'than in any former day of my life. Some of the oak, also, was very serviceable. These, with the black-walnut, are the settler's main reliance for timber, rails included. The elm, cotton- wood, sycamore, etc., warp so badly when sawed into boards and sea- soned, that very little use can be made of them, though I think I saw a few cotton-wood rails. The grass was abundant and superb ; the soil generally deep and excel- lent. "We had another smart thunder-shower on Friday morning (20th), after which I came from Prairie City to Lawrence, fifteen miles north. My companion was a young pioneer from southern Missouri, reared among slaves and slaveholders, but free-state from the time he could fairly see, who assured me that he knew a large portion of the people of Missouri to condemn and hate slavery, even while they shout and vote in its favor- He came out here in 1855 to be rid of the curse, and had had a pretty fair experience of the struggle, having been with Lane at Bnll Creek, when eight hundred Missou- rians did not venture to attack three hnndred and fifty free-state men, but, after being separated by night, beat a retreat across the line, leaving some of their arms and camp equipage behind them. He was also at the some- what noted " Battle of Black Jack," which he described to me substantially as follows : On the 1st of June, 1856, Henry Clay Pate, at the head of a pro-slavery band, emerging suddenly from the Indian Eeserve, which then covered most of the region between this point and the Missouri border, sur- prised the little settlement of Palmyra, which they MOKE NOTES ON KANSAS. 41 sacked without resistance. I^ext morning, tliej pro- posed to extend tlieir operations to Prairie City, which would probably have shared the same fate, had not Old Brown, lately driven from Osawatamie by an over- whelming force, been camped, with ten of his tried men, in the woods on Black Jack, a little creek four miles eastward. Strengthened by these, Prairie City resolved on resistance, and mustered its sixteen Sharp's rifles, in addition to those of Old Brown's party, and when the ruflians sent in six of their men to sack the place, pre- suming there wonld be no resistance, they took four of them prisoners, and chased the other two back to their band, with bullets whistling by their ears. They found the ruffians encamped on the open prairie, but drawn out in line for battle, where they stood perfectly still as the free-state men neared them, firing as they neared to get the range of their rifles. As they approached, a small ravine only lay betwixt them, but the two lines could be and were distinctly counted on either side — fifty-four men in rank composing the pro-slavery and twenty-six the free-state party. Soon, two or three of the ruffians went down badly wounded, and one after another of their comrades were seen tailing oflT, making tracks for Missouri at a 2 : 40 gait, until barely twen.ty. two of them remained, when Pate raised a white flag and surrendered at discretion, to just fourteen men standing in the free-state array at that moment. Seven horses, two wagons well laden with the plunder of Pal- myra, two drums, and about forty stand of arms, were among the " spoils of victory " and though Colonel Sum- ner with his United States troops came down on hearing 42 MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. of the affray, liberated the prisoners, and restored what they claimed as their property ; the booty taken from PalmjTa was left and restored to its rightful owners. 'Not one free-state man was killed or badly wounded. The wounded Missourians were kindly nursed at Prairie City till they were well enough to travel, when they were recommended to resume that wholesome excersise — a suggestion which they promptly and gladly heeded. Two of those who got away died of their wounds. And, though there were many alarms, and a year of marching, camping, scouting, riding, after that, to the destruction of all industry and progress, Prairie City has seen no organized company of border-ruffians at her doors since that 2d day of June, 1856. The road from that city to Lawrence (fifteen miles) passes over a rolling country, mainly prairie, crosses the great Santa Pe trail, now horribly cut up by many heavy wagons passing in bad weather, then takes over a high " divide" and along a limestone ridge which runs out into the valley of the Wakarusa, and affords a magnificent view of the country for an area of twenty miles in each direction, w^itli the prairie in good part cultivated, gleaming in sunlight on every bend, and the Wakarusa w^ith its belt of timber making its way through them to join the Kaw, with its still larger belt, on the north. Spacious mounds or spurs of limestone covered with soil and grass rise to a height of two or three hundred feet on every side, on one of which, visible for many miles on every side, a flag, when raised, used to give warning of invasion and danger in the troublous days now hap- pily passed away. At the base of one of these spurs. MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. 43 by the side of the Kaw, sits Lawrence, clearly discern- ible from a distance of ten miles. Descending from the ridge, and passing over a lower prairie two or three miles, we cross the Wakarusa (a moderate creek, hardly twenty yards wide, bnt very deep and with high, steep banks) on a good toll-bridge, traverse its wide, wet bottom, here in good part prairie-marsh, and pass over two miles of snperb prairie into the renowned citadel of free-state principle, the first-born of northern resolution that Kansas should not be tamely yielded to the slaveholders, and wdiich does not deny its parentage. Lawrence can only grow with the more thorough de- velopment of the surronnding country. Across the Kaw on the north, a large Indian reservation (the Dela- ware) impedes its progress, while town-sites, and very good ones are so abundant in Kansas, that no location but one where navigable water is abandoned for land transportation can be of very much account. 1 should say Lawrence has now five hundred dwellings and per- haps five thousand inhabitants ; and these figures are more likely to be over than under the mark. She has a magnificent hotel (the Eldridge House) — the best, I hear, between the Missouri and the Sacramento — far better, I fear, than its patronage will justify — though it has nearly all that Lawrence can give. She is to have a great University, for which a part of the funds are already provided ; but I trust it will be located some distance away, so as to give scope for a Model Farm, and for a perfect develo]3ment of tlie education of the brain and the hands together. Li our old states, the cost of land is always assigned as a reason for not blend- 4A: MOEE I^OTES ON KANSAS. ing labor with study authoritatively and systematically ; here there can be no such excuse. I trust the establish- ment of tlie Lawrence University will not be unduly hurried, but that it will be, whenever it does open its doors to students, an institution worthy of its name. I passed into the town over " Mount Oread," a con- siderable eminence on the south-west, on whose summit the free-state fortress of other days was constructed. It is now dilapidated, but is a place of considerable natural strength as a defensive position, and, in tTie hands of the grandsons of the men who defended Bun- ker Hill, would have cost something to whoever might have taken it. As it was, the ruffians, though often in the neighborhood in overwhelming force, and anxious enough for its destruction, never got possession of it but once, and then by marching with federal officers at their head and federal writs in their pockets. For one, I regret that even these were suffered to shield them, and thus allow printing-presses to be destroyed and houses battered down and burned with impunity. I did not speak long in Lawrence, for I trust words are not there needed. Her people have had practical illustrations of the great issue which divides the coun- try, and are not likely soon to forget them. Of course, her pioneers will die or become dispersed ; new men will come in or rise up to fill their places, and " another king arose who knew not Joseph," will find its parallel in her future. Thus, among her new-comers is the gen- tleman who led over one thousand armed Missourians from Jackson County in March, 1855, and returned by their votes and revolvers pro-slavery men to represent MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. 45 lier in the bogus Legislature of that year. He is, of course, an " Old-Line- Whig" of the Buchanan stripe, and will make a first-rate "Free-State Democrat" in dne season. By-and-bj, when the grogshops, already too numerous in Lawrence, shall have manufactured or attracted thither a sufficient number of ground-tier Democrats, and mortified pride or disappointed ambi- tion shall have wrought its perfect work with quite a number of sometime free-state men, he may be chosen mayor of the city of his young love, and The Constitu- tion (or whatever may then be the name of the pro- slavery organ at Washington) may announce with guns and trumpets that " JSTational Democracy has triumphed at last in tlie great stronghold of Kansas Abolition." But that will not probably happen just yet. While I was im Lawrence, the little steamboat " Gus Linn," Captain Beasley, came down the Kaw from Fort Riley, some thirty miles above the fork of the Big Blue, two hundred and thirty-five (I believe) from the mouth of the river, and over one hundred in a bee- line. She reached the fort in a little over two days from Kansas City, discharged her cargo, and loaded on her way down with corn, whereof Kansas has a large surplus of last year's growth, after supplying this year's heavy emigration to Bike's Peak. As the Territory has little or nothing else to sell, and almost everything to buy, she would like to export her corn if she had any way by which to get it to the Missouri without costing all it will fetch, so that this pioneer passage of a steam- boat above Topeka and Manhattan was hailed with general exultation. Her burthen is three hundred tons, 46 MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. and she draws when full but thirty inches (wlien light, scarcely ten), and, in the present stage of water, I pre- sume she might easily go up to the Falls, twenty miles further. Of course, she can only do this to smj purpose when the water is very high ; but, in the absence of passable roads, the fact that this river can be navigated at all throughout the most thickly-peopled portion of Kansas, is of some consequence. I left Lawrence by stage on Saturday morning, crossing the Kaw by a good ferry directly at fhe city, and rising to a wide and well-timbered bottom on the north. It is probably well for Lawrence ultimately tliat this timber is in Indian hands, and therefore sure to be preserved for some years, though for the present the Reserve is a nuisance to her. Beyond the Kaw bottom, stretches beautiful and gently undulating prairie, check- ered by belts of timber on the creeks which traverse it, across the Keserve and beyond, until we begin to de- scend the Missouri blufi's to Leavenworth. Coming to "Turkey Creek," the passengers were turned out (as once or twice before), to lighten the coach, which was then driven cautiously through the steep-banked ford, while the passengers severally let themselves down a perpendicular bank by clinging to a tree, and crossed a deep and whirling place above the ford, on the vilest log I ever attempted to walk — twisty sharp-backed, and every way detestable. One of the passengers refused to risk his life on it, but hired one of the lazy Indians loafing on the further bank to bring over a pony, and let him ride across the ford. At "Big Stranger," we changed coaches with the passengers from MOKE NOTES ON KANSAS. 4:1 Leavenworth — who had been waiting onr arrival here two hours, and must have been glad to see us — our baggage being first taken across the deep, ugly stream in a skiff, and the passengers next, either coach return- ing the way it came. We left Lawrence at nearly 10, and arrived here (thirty -five miles) about 6 p. m. LeaveuAvorth is, of course, much the largest place in Kansas, containing (I judge) one thousand houses and ten thousand inhabitants. The Fort, three miles up the Missouri, is not inchided in this estimate ; though that is a city of itself, w^ith extensive barracks, capacious store-houses, several companies of soldiers, many fine houses for ofiicers, sutlers, etc., and a farm of twelve hundred acres, which Uncle Sam cultivates, I presume, to much the same profit with other gentlemen who have fancy farms and do not oversee them very closely. It is a nice place, that Fort, with many excellent people about it ; but I can't help asking what it costs, and who pays, and wdiether that little bill might not be some- w^hat docked without prejudice to the public interest. I believe it could. Whenever our j^eople shall have grown w^ise enough to maintain no standing army what- ever but the barest skeleton of one, to be clothed with fiesh whenever needed by calling out volunteers, the annual expenditures maybe reduced at least one fourth, and we may build a railroad to the Pacific with the savings of three or four years. But Russell, Majors & Waddell's transportation estab- lishment, between the fort and the city, is the great feature of Leavenworth. Such acres of w\agons ! such pyramids of extra axletrees ! such herds of oxen ! such 48 MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. regiments of drivers and otlier employees! "No one who does not see can realize how vast a business this is, nor how immense are its outlays as well as its income. I presume this great firm has at this hour two millions of dollars invested in stock, mainly oxen, mules and wagons. (They last year employed six thousand team- sters, and worked forty-five thousand oxen.) Of course, they are capital fellows — so are those at the fort — but I protest against the doctrine that either army ofiicers or army contractors, or both together, may have power to fasten slavery on a newly organized territory (as has just been done in New-Mexico) under the guise of let- ting the people of such territories govern themselves. Yet this is just what "Squatter Sovereignty," unmodi- fied by a fiery anti-slavery agitation in the free-states, will in practice amount to. Whether the three great cities of America are to be ]N^ew York, St. Louis and Leavenworth, as one set of friends seem to think, or 'New York, St. Louis and Atchison, as another set assure me, I do not j^retend to decide. If Atchison had the start that Leavenworth now has, I think she would probably keep it. But not having it, you see, alters the case materially. The fort is here as a fixed fact; the United States goods are landed at th*e fort ; so the trains are made up there ; and so Leavenworth is Leavenworth, and Atchison (for the present) only Atchison. 1 saw a great mule train started from the fort to-day, and another will start soon, filled with one hundred and sixty soldiers' wives and babies, on their way to join their husbands in Utah, from wliom tliey have been separated MORE NOTES ON KANSAS. 49 nearly two years. I argue from this fact that Uncle Sam expects to have use for his army in Utah for some time yet. There has been no rain for three days ; the sun is bright and hot; tlie prairie-wind from the west is a gale ; the streams are down — all but " Big Muddy," which does not give an inch, but rushes by Leavenworth almost bank-fnll and turbid as ever. The roads which so lately were mud, are now blowing dust in clouds ; and there is a fair prospect of settled summer weather. I turn my face westward to-morrow. 3 • TV, MORE OF KANSAS. Manhattan, May 24, 1859. 1 LEFT Leavenworth in the Fort Riley stage at 6 a. m. on Tuesday, a day in advance of the " Pike's Peak Ex- press," which crosses the U. S. military road at tliis point, in order to gain time to visit Topeka and Manhat- tan, and sum up my impressions of Kansas for Tue Tkibune. Our road from Leavenworth lay over the heavy hill westward (which Leavenworth must soon cut down or it will cut her down materially), passing thence through the rich valley of Salt Creek and over a "divide" into that of the Stranger, which we forded at Easton, a village of thirty to fifty houses, famous for border-ruflian outrages and murders in 1856. The blufi's of the Stranger are here one to two hundred feet high, generally timbered with oak, etc., and so covered with limestone bowlders that scarcely more than half the ground is visible. These bowlders are generally oblong and irregularly fiat, making the best of stone- wall. I am informed that nine rods of capital wall is regarded as but a fair week's work for a good wall- builder, working by himself. We pass out of the valley just beyond Easton, rising to the slightly rolling prai- rie ; and henceforth for forty miles to Topeka our way lies through a gently heaving sea of grass, with timber generally visible along the water-courses on either side. MORE OF KANSAS. 51 Occasionally, however, we descend from tlie crest of the prairie into a barely perceptible hollow, and now nothing but grass and sky are visible, the two meeting a-t the horizon on every side. I do not like this region quite so well as the more rolling country south of Qlathe and Prairie City, across Bull Creek and the Marais des Cygnes ; but it is very fertile, fairly wooded, and sufficiently irregular in surface to carry off the water and leave few or no marshes or sloughs except in the road, where the frequent crossing of unbridged. water-courses is attended by a jolt and a jerk which render a doze dangerous and scarcely possible. In riding over such i»oads, all the pleasure must be drank in through the eyes alone. We stopped for dinner at the crossing of Grasshopper Creek, at the village of Osawkee, once the seat of Jef- ferson County's public buildings and a land office, botli now removed. Grasshopper Falls, I believe, next ob- tained the coveted distinction of being shire town ; both another popular vote removed it thence to Oskaloosa, on the road from Leavenworth to Lecompton, on the north line of the Delaware Reserve, whicli still covers a good part of Jefferson as well as of Leavenworth and Wyandot Counties. Osawkee, now probably four years old, is therefore in a state of dilapidation and decay, like a good many Kansas cities which figure largely on the map. Its business having left it, its great hotel was very mysteriously burned, and I presume the insurance on it was duly paid. We dined here at a very modest but comfortable tavern, kept by a kind and worthy Pennsylvania Dutchman, who recognized me from our Cr2 MORE OF KANSAS. having met at the Whig I^ational Convention at Ilar- risburg, nearly twenty years ago. Bearing south of west from Osawkee, we crossed Rock and Muddy Creeks (neither of them more rocky nor mnddy than the other), and were obliged by the lack of a bridge (now being repaired) over Halfday Creek, to keep ©n west to a petty village called Indianola, whence we turned a sharp angle through the magnificently fertile and admirably timbered bottom of the Kaw or Kansas to the Topeka ferry, which we reached a little after sundown, but were delayed by a great contractor's train which had been all day crossing, and was likely to be a good part of the morrow, so that we did not get across and into Topeka till nearly dark. I noticed with sorrow that the oxen which draw these great supply- wagons are often treated very cruelly, not merely in respect to the beating and whaling which every human brute delights in bestowing on every live thing over Avhich he domineers, but with regard to food and drink. Here were cattle that had stood in the yoke all that hot, dry day with nothing to eat or drink ; and, when they came down to the river mad with thirst, they were all but knocked down for trying to drink. I was as- sured that oxen are sometimes kept in the yoke, without food or drink, for two days, while making one of these river crossings. There can be no excuse for this. Those Avhich have lono^ to wait ouo^ht to be taken off and driven a mile or more if necessary to grass and fed there ; at all events, * they should be watered at least twice a day. How can a competent train-master — to say notliing of humanity— overlook the policy of this? MORE OF KANSAS. 53 The river is liere wider than at Lawrence or 'Wyan- dot below, is nearly as muddy as the Missouri, and runs witli a swift current even to its banks. An attempt had been made during the day to swim across a drove of cattle ; but the strong current carried them below the ferry landing on the south, whence the steep bank foj- bade their getting out, so that they w^ent down the river several miles, and three of them were drowned. The experiment of swimming proved wretched economy, alike in time and money. Topeka is a village of probably one hundred houses and one thousand inhabitants, situated on the north line of Shawnee County, which has the Sac and Fox Reserve on the south, tlie Potawatamie on the north-west, and the Delaware at a little distance on the north-east. Along the north bank of the river opposite, a party of halt-breeds have a reserve a mile wide by twenty miles long, and I give the good-for-nothing rascals credit for admirable judgment in selecting their land. There ia probably not an acre of their tract that could not be made to produce one hundred bushels of shelled corn by the application of less labor than w^ould be requked to produce thir' y bushels on the average in 'New York or New Englai 1. The soil is a river deposit four to six feet deep ; the timber large and choice — oak, elm, bass, black-walnut, sycamore, etc., with wild grape-vines four to six inches through, and a thick undergrowth of shrubbery and annuals. I begin to comprehend, though I do not excuse, the covetous impatience wherewith Indian reservations are regarded by their white neigh- bors. 64. MOKE OF KANSAS. Topeka was one of the strongholds of the free-state cause throughout the dark days of Kansas. Here as- sembled the first convention cliosen by the people to frame a state constitution as a rallying point for de- fense and mutual protection against the border-ruffian usurpation of 1855 ; here the free state legislature, peacefully assembled in 1856 to devise and adopt meas- ures looking to a redress of the unparalleled wrongs and outrages under which Kansas was then writhing, was dispersed by federal bayonets and cannon; here the guns of the U. S. troops were pointed against a mass- meeting of the people of Kansas, assembled in the open air to devise and adopt measures for the redress of their intolerable grievances, and that meeting compelled to disperse under ]3enalty of military execution. And here I renew my vows of hostility to that federal standing army until it shall have been disbanded. It is utterly at war with the genius and perilous to the existence of republican institutions. The regular soldier is of neces- sity the blind, passive, mechanical instrument of power. If ordered to shoot his own father, he must obey or be shot himself. Twice has the French Republic been crushed by Bonapartean usurpation — crashed by the bayonets of a standing army pointed a the breasts of her faithful legislators. A republic whose citizens are not willing to do their own fighting — all that is neces- sary and proper — but must have a standing army to do it for them, lies at the mercy of any bold, unscrupulous adventurer who can w^ork his w^ay to the command or the favor of that army. I trust ours is near its end. After greeting friends and speaking in Topeka, I MORE OF KANSAS. 55 learned with surprise that the stage for Fort Eiley would start at three in the morning, leaving but a nar- row margin for sleep. On rising, however, I found that the high w^ind would not allow us to cross the river yet, and it was nearly six o'clock when we actually started. We had now enjoyed three dry, bright, warm days, which had turned most of the mire of the roads to a sort of adobe^ or sun-burned brick, though enough still re- mained in sunken holes and brook-crossings to remind us of what had been. But the lightning had flashed, and the clouds gathered throughout the night ; and, as we drove out through Indianola and took the military road westward, the thunder gave indications of the shower which burst upon us a little before nine o'clock and poured till eleven, turning the brick of the road to mire again. And, though the rain ceased, the day re- mained sullen and lowering, with transient glimpses of weak sunshine, to the end. Our route lay for thirty miles through the Potawat- amie Reserve, and was no longer encumbered with great army supply-trains, as they Avere either north of us on the California trail to Laramie, or south on the road crossing at Topeka and leading to Fort Union and Santa Fe. A few^ of the wagons we passed this day may have been heading for Forts Riley and Kearney; while "Pike's Peakers," both going out, and returning disheartened, were in considerable numbers. I do not see how tliose returning could well resist the temptation to halt and make claims, as I hear many have do-ne, generally seek- ing them in the south part of the territory, where spec- ulation has been less rampant than in the vicinity of the 56 MOEE OF KANSAS. Kaw. With a wagon-load of provisions and three or four yoke of oxen, a squatter might, even ^-et, by the help of a. good plow, get in twenty acres of sod-corn this season, cut hay for winter, and break a glorious breadth of prairie before hard frost could stop him next fall. Whoever does this judiciously and resolutely will have reason for gratitude to Pike's Peak, even though he never see the color of its gold nor get nearer to it than the Big Bine. We traveled all day with the timber of the Kaw vis- ible on the south, sometimes quite near us, then one to two or three miles distant. Our road lay for a conside- rable distance along the bank of what seemed a deserted bed of the river, which has since made a new and deeper channel more to the south. At one point this old bed is so deep that it still retains water, and now figures as a narrow lake. We traversed the prairie, of course, except where it was cut by the creeks coming down from the north to lose themselves in the Kaw. The Soldier, the Ked Yerraillion, and another Rock Creek, were the principal of these streams. Our road passed St. Mary's (Catholic) Mission, where there is quite an Indian vil- lage and a very large improvement, which I guess white men were paid to make. Yet, whether to their credit or otherwise, I believe the truth cannot fairly be dis- puted, that Catholic Missions have been more successful in establishing a j)ermanent influence over Indians than any others, except, perhaps, those of the Moravians. At the Ped Yermillion — still on the Potawatamie Re- serve, but near its western edge — we dined ; the land- ladv a half-breed — the dinner the hardest I ever vet MOEE OF KANSAS. 57 paid lialf a dollar for. Doubtless, however, my eyes will be opened to an appreciation of cold hog and corn dodger as delicacies, long befoi-e tliey are blessed with a sight of the Sacramento. A wide, marshy bottom — over wliich each charioteer seeks an nntraversed path, since a rnt buries him so much deeper in the mire — lies just west of the Yerniillion (which, with two or three other steep-banked streams, we crossed on Indian toll-bridge?, cheaply built and very profitable to their owners ;) whence tlie land rises into rolling sandy ridges, some of them thinly wooded up their sides with white and burr-oak. Thence we strike the old-fashioned deep, black prairie again — most invi- ting to the cultivator, but not so grateful to the traveler, just after a soaking rain — and, passing the stakes and ruinous cabin or so of one or two still-born cities, we each the Big Blue, which here joins the Kansas from the north. It is nearly as wide as the Kansas or Kaw at Lawrence, but of course neither so swift nor so deep. It is far clearer, even just after a heavy shower, than the Kansas ; as is strikingly evinced at and below the junc- tion, where the two streams run for some distance side by side in the same channel without mingling. The Big Blue rises near the Platte, in what is now IS^ebraska, but which will be included in Kansas if the Platte is made her northern boundary, as it seems likely to be. Its general course is a little east of south ; its length one hundred and fif'y miles. I understand that there is a good deal of settlement already along its course and on its tributaries, though I judge from the relative purity of its water that some part of this region 58 MORE OF KANSAS. must be less fertile than those of Kansas I liave seen. Manhattan is an embryo city of perhaps one hnndred houses, of which several were unroofed and three or four utterly destroyed by a tornado on the wild night I passed at Atchison (15th inst.) So violent was the tempest, that a large sign-board was carried across the Bine and thrown down fully half a mile from the spot at which it w^as taken np ; and other heavy articles were swept away which have not since been fonnd. Several fami- lies deprived of home and shelter by the hurricane are temporarily lodged in the basement of the new hotel just erected here — a three-story building 55 by 33, with limestone walls and black-walnnt finishing — an estab- lishment of which there is urgent need. The embryo city is located on the flat, deep bottom in the forks of the rivers, with a high limestone bluff, afl'ording capital material for building, just behind it. The Kansas comes hither from the south-west, and has Fort Riley and its large military reservation fifteen miles distant on its north bank, with the intended city of Ogden just east and "Junction City" just west of it, at the forks of the Kansas, whence its more northerly branch is known as the Kepublican, and its more southerly as the Smoky Hill. At Junction City, is a newspaper — the most westerly, I presume, in Kansas, apart from the Pike's Peak re- gion — founded and kept alive by an army sutler, and of course "Democratic" in its inculcations. In opposi- tion to it, The ManliaUan Express is about to be issued here by M. Yivalde, an Italian exile and a devotee of MORE OF KANSAS. 59 universal liberty, who will of course sustain the repub- lican cause. I commend him and his journal to the confidence and patronage of all who would like a weekly bulletin from the Far West. I spoke here last evening in the midst of another gathering tempest, which burst in rain as I closed, and it continued to flash and roll all night, with considerable rain, and is cloudy and blowing a gale to-day. I fear we shall be stopped by high water on the plains. I had hoped to sum up my impressions of Kansas in this letter, but that would make it too long. Let me close with an incident wliich is currently reported throughout this region as having recently taken place at a crossing of the Big Blue, known as Marysville (of course not the Marysville of Bull Creek), some sixty miles north of this place : A party of disheartened gold-seekers, it is said, were returning from the plains, and came to this ferry, which they insisted on crossing without payment, saying they had no money. The ferryman refused to take them over until paid — (anotiier account says he asked them an exorbitant price) — when they attempted to take his boat and put tliemselves across — whereupon he drew his revolver, they drawing almost at the same instant. He was of course riddled with balls, and fell dead, but not till he had either killed or severely wounded five of his assailants. One more illustration of border life : A quarrel re- cently arose about a " claim " — that fruitful source of frays -and lawsuits in new settlements — on one of the creeks a few miles from this place. The stronger party, 60 MORE OF IvANSAS. composed of several who are known here as bad fellows, told the resident he must leave, which he, in fear for his life, consented to do. His wife, however, more resohite, resolved to hold possession, and bade them defiance, turning as she did so to go into the house and bar the door. As she turned, she was fired at and fatall}^ wounded. She died two hours thereafter, having first made a statement of the affair, which was taken down from her dying lips. The adverse party came down at once to the nearest justice and told their story, expect- ing to clear their leader, who fired the fatal shot ; but the justice, after hearing them through, considered that it implicated the whole party (five), and consequently held them to answer to the charge of murder. SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. Manhattan, Hay 26, 1859. I like Kansas — that is, natural Kansas — better than I had expected to. The soil is richer and deeper; the timber is more generally diffused ; the country more rolling, than I had supposed them. There are of course heavy drawbacks in remoteness from the seaboard, heavy charges for bulky goods, low prices for produce, Indian reserves, and the high price of good lumber. For instance, pine boards used in building at this place came from Alleghany County, JS". Y., and were rafted down some mill-stream to the Alleghany, thence down the Alleghany to Pittsburgh, and the Ohio to Cairo ; were thence taken up the Missouri to St. Louis, the Missouri to Kansas City, and the Kansas to this place, which has but twice or thrice been reached by a steam- boat. When here, they were dog cheap at one hundred dollars per thousand superficial feet, or ten cents for every square foot. In the absence of steamboat naviga- tion on the Kansas, they must here be richly worth one hundred and twenty-five dollars per thousand feet. And, while there is pretty good timber here for other purposes, there is little — and that mainly black-walnut — that will make good boards. The ready cotton wood along the banks of the streams cuts easily, but warps so when seasoned that it will draw the nails out of the 62 SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. side of a house. Elm is of course equally perverse ; aud I have seen few indigenous boards that were not either black- walnut or oak. But much of the oak is small, short, and gnarly ; while the black-walnut is likely to be exhausted. I see young ones coming up thickly in some of the river bottoms ; but these have much to con- tend with, and will not at best be large enough to saw for many years. No doubt, the timber of Kansas in- creases each year, and will increase still faster as roads and improvements are- multiplied, limiting the sweep of the prairie-fires ; but it will always cost more to build a decent house of wood in the interior of Kansas than in any part of New York or 'New England — I think twice as much. This is a heavy tax on a new country, where not only houses but barns are a general, primary, and pressing need. 1 rejoice to see the new timber creeping up the bluffs of the streams ; I note with pleasure that much of this is hickory and some of it white-ash ; I doubt not that there will always be wood enough here for fencing and fuel ; but if the Pike's Peak region can send a good lot of pine lumber (even yellow-pine) down the Platte and the Arkansas, it will be worth more to Kansas than all her gold. I consider Kansas well watered — no prairie-state better. I do not confine this remark to the present, when everything is flooded, and likely to be more so. I mean that springs, streams, creeks, rivers, are quite universal. For my own private drinking, I should like a supply not so much impregnated with lime ; but, for limestone water, this is generally quite good. And the limestone itself is among the chief blessings SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. 63 of Kansas. I presume it underlies every foot of lier soil I have yet traversed, with nearly every square mile that will be comprised within the state of Kansas. You see it cropping out from almost every bluff; it lies tliickly strewn in bowlders over the surface of every headland or promontory that makes out into the bot- toms, low prairies, or ravines ; so that if you want to use it, it is always to be drawn (or rolled) down hill. Though not liere needed as a fertilizer, it can every- where be quarried with little labor into building-stone, or burned for use in putting up chimneys and plastering walls. Though somewhat decomposed (I presume, by the action of water upon it through thousands of years) and readily cleaving into blocks of suitable size for house-walls, it is said to harden by exposure to the atmosphere, and make a very durable wall. It is the constant though unobserved decomposition of this stone that has contributed so largely to the fertility of this soil, and now countervails tlie enormous waste through tlie rivers. I presume all the guano imported yearly into our country does not eqnal in fertilizing value the annual outflow from the Kansas river alone. I judge that Indian corn can be grown here as cheaply as anywhere on earth. Thousands of acres last year produced their hundred bushels of shelled grain per acre, at a very moderate cost for labor and none at all for manure. An extensive farmer, wdio grew many thousands of bushels near Leavenworth, assured me that the cost of his corn, cribbed in the ear, was just six cents per bushel of ears, equal to nine cents per bushel of grain-^three half bnshels of ears of the great Ohio 64 SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. kind here cultivated making a busliel of grain. Of course, this estimate exchides the cost of land, breaking, and fencing; but, making a fair allowance for these, the net cost of that corn cannot have exceeded twenty cents per bushel. I presume it would now sell in his crib for forty cents, while here in the interior it is worth from twenty-five to thirty-five cents per bushel. I met at Osawatamie an old Whig and now Kepub- iican friend w^ho left New York City (where he had been an industrious mechanic) and settled between Lawrence and Topeka two years ago. He liad last year eighty acres in corn, which yielded four thousand bush- els, worth to him thirty -five or forty cents per bushel. His clear profit on this corn, above the immediate cost of growing it, can hardly have been less than one thou- sand dollars. He will grow more this year, with wheat, potatoes, etc.; yet he is one of a class who are popularly supposed incapable of making money by farming. I suspect few life-long farmers of similar means will have good buildings over their heads and fruit-trees and other elements of material comfort around them sooner than my friend. Wheat and oats did badly last year, owing to the heavy summer rains which rusted and blighted them. Too little of either have been sown for this year's harvest, yet I find both winter and spring wheat looking re- markably well almost everywhere. Oats are scarcely more than out of the ground ; yet they, too, promise well, so far as can now be foreseen. But an unpleasant truth must be stated : There are too many idle, shiftless people in Kansas. I speak not SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. 65 here of lawyers, gentlemen speculators, and other non- producers, who are in excess here as elsewhere; I allude directly to those who call themselves settlers, and who would be farmers if they Avere anything. To see a man squatted on a quarter-section in a cabin which would make a fair hog-pen, but is unfit for a human habita- tion, and there living from hand to mouth by a little of this and a little of that, with hardly an acre of prairie broken (sometimes without a fence up), with no garden, no fruit-trees, "no nothing" — waiting for some one to come along and buy out his "claim" and let him move on to repeat the operation somewhere else — this is enouo^h to i^-ive a cheerful man the horrors. Ask the squatter what he means, and he can give you a hundred good excuses for his miserable condition : he has no breaking-team ; he has little or no good rail-timber ; he has had the " shakes ;" his family have been sick ; he lost two years and some stock by the border-ruffians, etc., etc. But all this don't overbear the facts that, if he has no good timber, some of his neighbors have it in abundance, and would be very glad to have him work part of it into rails on shares at a fair rate ; and if he has no breaking-team, he can hire out in haying and harvest, and get nearly or quite two acres broken next month for every faithful week's work he chooses to give at that busy season. The poorest man ought thus to be able to get ten acres broken, fenced, and into crop, each year. For poor men gradually hew farms out of heavy timber, where every fenced and cultivated acre has cost twice to thrice the work it does here. And it is sad to note that hardly half the settlers make 6() SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. any sort of provision for wintering their cattle, even by cutting a stack of prairie-hay, when every good clay's work will pnt np a ton of it. If he has a corn-field, the sqnatter's cattle are welcome to pick at that all winter ; if he has none, they must go into the bottoms and browse through as best they can. Hence his calves are misera- ble aflfairs ; his cows unfit to make butter from till the best of the season is over ; his oxen, should he have a pair, must be recruiting from their winter's famine just when he most urgently needs their work. And this ex- posing cattle all winter to these fierce prairie-winds, is alike inhuman and wasteful. I asked a settler the other day how he coidd do it?^ "1 had no time to make a shelter for them." "But had you no Sundays? — did you not have these at your disposal ?" " O, yes ? I don't work Sundays." " Well, you should have worked every one of them, rather than let your cattle shiver in the cold blasts all winter — it would have been a w^ork of humanity and mercy to cut and haul logs, get up a cattle- stall, and cover it with prairie-hay, which I will warrant to be more religious than any thing you did on those Sundays." But the squatter was of a different opinion. How a man located in a little squalid cabin on one of these rich " claims" can sleep moonlit nights under the average circumstances of his class, passes my compre- hension. I should want to work moderately but reso- lutely, at least fourteen hours of each secular day, until I had made myself comfortable, with a fence around at least eighty acres, a quarter of this partitioned ofi:' for my woi'king cattle, a decent, warm shelter to cover them in cold or stormy weather, a tolerable habitation for SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. 67 my fciniily, at least forty acres in cro^), and a young or- chard growing. For one commencing with next to nothing, 1 estimate this as the work of five years ; after which, lie might take things more easily, awaiting the fruit from his orchard and the coming np of his boys to help him. But for the first four or five years, the poor pioneer should work every hour that he does not abso- lutely need for rest. Every hour's work then will save him many hours in after life. For the farmer who comes in with liberal means, the task is obviously much easier. Let us suppose one to be worth $5,000 the day he lands on the Kansas shore of the Missouri, and see how quickly he can make a farm and a home. He arrives, we will say, in August, when he can see just what the country produces, whether in a state of nature or under cultivation. He buys a quarter-section (which is land enough for any man) in a choice locality, including thirty or forty acres of timbered river or creek bottom, say for $10 per acre, charges $1,000 of the $1,600 thus called for to the account of the pro-slavery democracy, for defeating the free land bill, and sets to work, with two good hired men. He buys five yoke of oxen for a breaking-team, a span of good wagon-horses, a cow in fresh milk, and three heifers w^hich will be cows next spring, puts up a cabin that will just do, and is ready to commence breaking by the 1st of September. As his men break, he follows with the horses, sowing and harrowing in wheat so long as that will answer, but does not stop breaking till the ground is frozen, ^ow he begins to cut and draw tim- ber for a fitter habitation to which to welcome his fam- GS SUMMING UP ON KANSAS. ily ill the spring. Having done this, he gets good me- clianics to finish it, while he and his men go to work at fencing, by cutting saw-logs for light, narrow boards, if there be a saw-mill convenient ; if not, then by cutting for and splitting rails. So soon as the dryest land will answer for it, he begins to put in sprhig wheat, then oats, then corn, putting up fence whenever the soil is too w^et for plowing. Let him not forget to have a few acres seasonably set in fruit-trees, some of them dwarfs for early bearing. Thus his money will not have been exhausted by the ensuing fall, when he will have crops coming in and more than a hundred acres of his land broken and subdued for future cultivation. I see no reason why a resolute, good manager should not be com- fortable after his first year or two, and henceforth take the world as easily as need be. He who comes in with but $2,000, $1,000 or $500, must of course be much longer in working his way to a position of comfort and independence ; but if he will work right ahead, wasting neither days nor dollars, and keeping clear of specula- tion and office-seeking, he can hardly fail to do w^ell. As to the infernal spirit of land speculation and mo- nopoly, I think no state ever suffered from it more severely than this. The speculators in broadcloth are not one whit more rapacious or pernicious than the spec- ulators in rags, while the latter are forty times the more numerous. Land speculation here is about the only business in which a man can embark with no other cap- ital than an easy conscience. For example : I rode up the bluffs back of Atchison, and out three or four miles on the high rolling prairie, so as to have some fifteen to SITI^OIING TTP ON KANSAS. 69 twenty square miles in view at one glance. On all this inviting area, there were perhaps lialf a dozen poor or middling habitations, while not one acre in each hun- dred was fenced or broken. My friend informed me that every rood I saw was " preempted," and held at thirty np to a hundred dollars or more per acre. " Pre- empted!" I exclaimed; how preempted? by living or lying ?" " Well," he responded, " they live a little and lie a little." - I could see abundant evidence of the lying, none at all of the living. To obtain a preemption,, the squatter must swear that he actually resides on the quar- ter-section he applies for, has built a habitation and made other improvements there, and wants the land for his own use and that of his family. The squatters who took possession of these lands must every one have com- mitted gross perjury in obtaining preemption — and so it is all over the territory, wherever a lot is supposed likely to sell soon for more than the minimum price. I heard of one case in which a squatter carried a martin-box on to a quarter-section, and on the strength of that martin- box, swore that h^ had a house there " eighteen by twenty" — he left the officer to presume the feet. So it is all over; the wretched little slab shanty which has sufficed to swear by on one " claim," is now moved off and serves to swear bv onunother, wlien the first swear- ing: is done. I am confident there is not at this hour any kind of a house or other s'gn of improvement on one-fourth of the quarter-sections throughout Kansas which have been secured by preemption. The squatter who thus establishes a " claim" sells it out, so soon as practicable, to some speculator, wlio follows in his wake, 70 SUMMING UP ON IvANSAS. getting from $50 to $300 for that which the future bona- iide settler will be required to pay $250 to $1,500 for. Such, in practical operation, is the system designed and ostensibly calculated to shield the poor and industrious settlers from rapacity and extortion ; but which, in fact, operates to oppress and plunder the real settler- — to 23ay a premium on perjury — to foster and extend speculation — to demoralize the people, paralyze industry and im- poverish the country. But the fierce, chilly gale has blown away the tempest of last night" — the clouds fly scattered and brassy — it is time to look for the Leavenworth Express, whereof two stages west from this point will bear me beyond the bounds of settlement and civilized life. Adieu to friend- ly greetings and speakings ! Adieu for a time to pen and paper ! Adieu to bed-rooms and wash-bowls ! Adieu (let me hope) to cold rains and flooded rivers ! Hurrah for Pike's Peak ! * There was a heavj snow storm that night at Denver, and. throughout its vicinity. YI. ON THE PLAINS. Station 9, Pike's Peak Express Co., ) Pipe Creek, May 28, 1859. I WAS detained at Manhattan nearly a day longer than I had expected to be by high water. Wildcat, live miles west, and Rock Creek, seventeen miles east, were both impassable on Thnrsday, so that an express-wagon from Pike's Peak was stopped behind the former, while f^YQ mail-coaches and express-wagons faced each other through part of Thursday and all of Thnrsday night across the latter. IS^ext morning, however, each stream had run out, so that they could be forded, and at one p. M. I took my seat in the Pike's Peak express, and again moved westward. Our way was still along the United States militarjr road, crossing AVildcat, now a reasonable stream, and winding for some miles over rugged, thin-soiled lime- stone hills, then striking down south-westward into the prairie bottom of the Kansas, which is as rich as land need be. A few miles of this brought us to Ogden, a land-office city of thirt^^ or forty houses, some of them well built of stone. Just beyond this begins the Fort Piley reservation, a beautiful tract of prairie and timber stretching for four or five miles along the northern bank of the Kansas, and including the sad remains of Pawnee City, at which Gov. Peeder summoned the first (bogus) 72 ON TFTE PLAINS. legislature of Kansas to meet — then fifty to one hundred miles westward of anywhere. They obeyed the sum- mons, but forthwith adjourned to Shawnee Mission, a pro-slavery strongliold on the Missouri border. Paw^nee City is now of the things that were. Fort Riley is a position which does credit to the taste of whoever selected it. It is on high, rolling prairie, with tlie Kansas on the south, the Republican on the west, heavy limestone bluffs on the nortli, and the best timber in middle or western Kansas all around. The barracks are comfortable, the hospital large and well placed, the officers' quarters spacious and elegant, and the stables most extensive and admirable. I hear that two millions of Uncle Sam's money have been expended in making these snug arrangements, and that the oats largely consumed here have often cost three dollars per bushel. I have seen nothing else at all aomparable to this in the way of preparations for passing life agreeably since I left the Missouri. "We here crossed by a rope ferry the Republican or northern fork of the Kansas, which, like the Big Blue, twenty -five miles back, seems nearly as large as the Kansas at its mouth, though the Smoky Hill, or southern fork at this point, is said to be the largest of the three. We met at the ferry a number of families, with a large herd of cattle, migrating from south-western Missouri to California, and crossing here to take the road up the right bank of the Republican to Fort Kearney and so to Laramie. They had exhausted their patience in trying to swim their cattle, and would hardly be able to get them all ferried over till next day. All day, as on pre- / ON THE PLAINS. 73 ceding days, we had been meeting ox-wagons loaded with disheartened Pike's Peakers, returning to their homes, but some of them going down into southern Kansas in search of " claims." Most of those we inter- rogated said they had been out as far as Fort Kearney (some two hundred miles further, I believe), before they were turned back by assurances that Pike's Peak is a humbug. Across the Republican, between it and the Smoky Hill, is Junction City, as yet the most western village in Kansas, save that another has been started some fifty miles up the Smoky Hill. "We stopped here for the night, and I talked republicanism in the church for an hour or so. Junction has a store, two hotels, and some thirty or forty dwellings, one of which is distinguished for its age, having been erected so long ago as 1858. A patriotic Junctioner excused his city for not possessing something which I inquired for, but which its rival, Manhattan, was supposed to have ; " for said he, " Man- hattan is three years old." As Junction is hardly a year old yet, the relative antiquity of Manhattan, and the re- sponsibilities therein involved, were indisputable. Junc- tion is the center of a fine agricultural region, though timber is not so abundant here as I wish it were. This region is being rapidly shingled with " claims ;" I hope it is likewise to be filled with settlers — though that does not always follow. Our landlord (a German) had tried California ; then Texas ; and now he is trying Kansas, which seems to agree with' him. We started again at six this morning, making a little north of west, and keeping the narrow belts of timber 74 ON THE PLAINS. * along the Kepublican and the Smoky Hill respectively in full view for several miles on either side, until the streams diverged so far that we lost them in the bound- less sea of grass, A mile or two of progress carried us beyond any road but that traced only this spring for the Pike's Peak expresses ; for ten miles onward, no house, no field, no sign of human agency, this road and a few United States surveyors' stakes excepted, was visible ; at length we came to where a wretched cabin and an acre or so of broken and fenced prairie showed what a pioneer had been doing through the last two or three years, and beside it was a tavern — the last, I presume, this side of Pike's Peak. It consisted of a crotched stake which, with the squatter's fence aforesaid, support- ed a ridge-pole, across which some old sail-cloth was drawn, hanging down on either side, and forming a cabin some six by eight feet, and perhaps from three to five and a half feet high — large enough to contain two whisky-barrels, two decanters, several glasses, three or four cans of pickled oysters and two or three boxes of sardines, but nothing of the bread kind whatever. The hotel-keeper probably understood his business better than we did, and had declined to dissipate his evidently moderate capital by investing any part of it in articles not of prime necessity. Our wants being peculiar, we could not trade with him, but, after an interchange of courtesies, passed on. Two miles further, we crossed, by a bad and difficult ford, "Chapman's Creek," running south to the Smoky Hill, bordered by a thin streak of tim.ber, and meander- ing through a liberal valley of gloriously rich prairie. ON THE PLAINS. 75 Here we passed the last settler on our road to Pike's Peak. He lias been here two or three years; has seventy-five acres fenced and broken, grew three thou- sand bushels of corn last year, has a fine stock of horses and cattle about him, with at least eight tow-headed children under ten years old. His house, judged super- ficially, would be dear at fifty dollars, but I think he neither needs nor wishes to be pitied. Our road bore hence north of west, up the left bank of Chapman's Creek, on which, twenty-three miles from Junction, we halted at "Station 8," at 11 a. m., to change mules and dine. (This station should be 'SlYO miles further on, and three or four miles further south, but cannot be for want of wood and water.) There is, of course, no house here, but two small tents and a brush arbor furnish accommodations for six to fifteen persons, as the case may be. A score of mules are picketed about on the rich grass ; there is a rail-pen for the two cows ; of our landlady's two sun-browned children (girls of ten and six respectively) one was born in Missouri, the other at Laramie. I was told that their father was killed b}^ Indians, and that the station-keeper is her second husband. She gave us an excellent dinner of bacon and greens, good bread, apple-sauce and pie, and would have given us butter had we passed a few days later ; but her cows, just arrived, have been over-driven, and need a few days rest and generous feeding. The water was too muddy — the prejudices of education would not permit me to drink it — the spring being sub- merged by the high water of the brook, which was the only remaining resource. She apologized for making 76 ON THE PLAINS. lis eat in her narrow tent rather than under her brusli arbor, saying that the hist time she set the table there the high prairie- wind made a clean sweep of table- cloth and all upon it, breaking several of her not abmi- dant dishes. I have rarely made a better dinner, though the violent rain of the second previous night came nigh drowning out the whole concern. We were in the wagon again a few minutes before noon (the hours kept on the Plains are good), for we had thirty-five miles yet to make to-day, which, with a mule team require a long afternoon. True, the roads are harder here, less cut up, less muddy, than in Eastern Kansas ; but few men think how much up and down is saved them in traveling over a civilized region by bridges and causeways over water-courses. We still kept north of west for several miles, so as to cling to the high "divide " between Chapman's Creek and Solo- mon's Fork (another tributary of the Smoky Hill) so far as possible. Soon we saw our first antelope, and, in the course of the afternoon, five others ; but not one of them seemed to place a proper estimate on the value of our society. Two of them started up so near us as to be for a moment within possible rifle-shot; but they widened tlie gap between us directly. We crossed many old buff'alo-trails and buftalo-heads nearly reduced to the skeleton, but no signs that buffalo have been so far east this season. Two or three of the larger water- courses we crossed had here and there a cotton-wood or stunted elm on its banks, but the general dearth of timber is fearful, and in a dry season there can be little or no water on this long thirty-five miles. But it must OK THE PLAINS. 77 be considered that our route avoids the streams, and of course the timber, to the utmost. The creek on which we are encamped (a branch of Solomon's) is now a fair mill-stream, but in a dry time might doubtless be run thi'ough a nine-inch ring. It has considerable wood on its banks — say a belt averaging ten rods in width. Twenty miles back, the rock suddenly changed en- tirely from the universal limestone of Kansas, east of Chapman's Creek to a decaying red sandstone; the soil hence becomes sandy and much thinner ; the grass is also less luxuriant, though in some places still good. For acres, especially on the higher ridges, there is little or no soil ; rock in place or slightly disturbed nearly covering the surface. Through all this region, the furi- ous rains, rushing off in torrents without obstruction, have worn wide and devious water-courses, but they are neither deep enough nor permanently wet enough to shelter timber. I reckon "claims" will not be greedily hunted nor bought at exorbitant prices here- abouts for some years yet. Our hostess for the night has two small tents, as at 'No. 8, and gave us a capital supper, butter included ; but she and her two children alike testify that, in one of the drenching thunder-storms so frequent of late, they might nearly as well have been out on the prairie, and that sleeping under such a visitation is an art only to be acquired by degrees. They have a log-cabin going up, I am happy to say. Their tents were first located on the narrow bottom of the creek; but a rapidly rising flood compelled them, a few nights since, to scramble out, and move them to a higher bench of 78 ON THE PLAINS. prairie. It would have been pitiful to have been turned out so, only the shelter they were enjoying was good for nothing. I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its lowest round. If the Cheyennes — thirty of whom stopped the last express down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from it — shall see fit to capture and strip us, we shall proba- bly have further experience in the same line ; but for the present the progress I have made during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of human existence may be roughly noted thus : May Vltli. — Chicago. — Chocolate and morning news- papers last seen on the breakfast-table. 23<^. — Leavenworth. — Koom-bells and baths make their final appearance. '^Uh. — Topeka. — Beef-steak and wash-bowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. 26?5A. — Manhattan. — Potatoes and eggs last recog- nized among the blessings that " brighten as they take their flight." chairs ditto. 27^'A. — Junction City. — Last visitation of a boot-black, with dissolving views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by. 28z5A. — Pijpe Creeh. — Benches for seats at meals have disappeared, giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn) write our letters in the express-wagon that has borne us by day, and must sup- ply us lodgings for the night. Thunder and lightning from both south and west give strong promise of a ON THE PLAINS. 79 shower before morning. Dubious looks at several holes in the canvas covering of the wagon. Our trust, under Providence, is in buoyant hearts and an India-rubber blanket. Good-night. yn. THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO. Station 11, Pike's Peak Express, ) Clear Creek, Hay 29, 1859. f I CEASED writing 'No. YI. last niglit at midnight at Station 9 — the storm, which had been threatened since dark, jnst bm*sting in wind and rain. The wind was a gale, but upset neither tents nor wagons ; the rain fell for about an hour, then ceased, though a little more fell this morning, and we have had thunder and lightning at intervals through the day, and have it still, threaten- ing showers before dawn. We rose early from our wagon-bed this morning, had breakfast at six, and soon bade adieu to Pipe Creek, with its fringe of low elms and cotton-woods, such as thinly streak all the streams we have passed to-day that ai'e large enough to protect timber from prairie-fires. Yery soon, we were off the sandstone upon limestone again, which has been the only rock visible for the last forty miles, and this but sparingly. The soil is of course improved, but I think not equal to that of Eastern Kansas. The face of the country is slightly rolling — in one place, a level prairie e.''even miles wide — but even this is cut and washed out by shallow water-courses, probably dry a good part of each summer. We have crossed many streams to-day, all making south for Solomon's Fork, which has throughout been from two to six miles from us on our THE HOME OF TETE BrFFALO. 81 left, its narrow belt of timber constantly sending out longer or shorter spurs up tlie creeks which feed it on either side. The route has been from fifty to two hun- dred feet above the bed of the Fork, keeping out of all bottoms and marshes, but continually cut by water- courses, often with abrupt banks and miry beds, in one of which only were we stalled until an extra span of mules was sent from the other wagon to our aid. (The express-wagons always go in pairs, for reciprocal aid and security.) I presume all the timber we have passed through since we left the Eepublican at Junction (and we are now one hundred and ten miles from it by our route, and perhaps one hundred in a straight line), would not form a belt half a mile wide, with but a few white-oaks to render it of any value except for fuel. A low, long-limbed, twisty elm, forms three-fourths of all the wood we have seen this side of Junction ; the resi- due is mainly cotton-wood. The streams are usually clear, except where riled by recent showers, and springs are not infrequent. If well timbered, this country would be rather inviting. It is largely covered with the dead stalks of the wild sunflower, which is said to indicate a good soil for corn. The sunflower plant has not started this season. On rising our first ridge this morning, a herd of buf- falo was seen grazing on the prairie some three miles toward the Solomon ; soon, more were visible ; then others. At length, a herd of perhaps a hundred ap- peared on the north — the only one we saw on that side of our road during the day. Having been observed, they were heading down the valley of a small creek 4* 82 THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO. toward the Solomon. Just then, the tents and wagons of a body of encamped Pike's Feakers appeared right across a little creek ; two men were running across the prairie on foot to get a shot at the buffalo ; another was mounting a horse with like intent. The herd passed on a long, awkward gallop north of the tents and struck southwest across our road some forty rods ahead of us. A Sharp's rifle was leveled and fired at them by one of our party, but seemed rather to hasten than arrest their progress. But one old bull shambled along behind in a knock-kneed fashion (having probably been lamed by some former party) ; and he was fired at twice by our marksmen as he attempted to cross the road — once when only fifteen rods distant. They thought they wounded him fatally, but he vanished from our sight behind a low hill, and their hasty search for him proved unsuccessful. Thence nearly all day, the buffalo in greater or less numbers were visible among the bottoms of the Solomon on our right — usually two to three miles distant. At length, about 5 p. m., we reached the crest of a " divide," whence we looked down on the valley of a creek running to the Solomon some three miles distant, and saw the whole region from half a mile to three miles south of our road, and for an extent of at least four miles east and west, fairly alive with buffalo. There certainly were not less than ten thousand of them; I believe there were many more. Some were feeding, others lying down, others pawing up the earth, rolling on it, etc. The novel spectacle was too tempting for our sportsmen. The wagons were stopped, and two THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 83 men walked quietly toward tlie center of tlie front of the herd. Favored by a water-course, they crept up to within fifty rods of tiie buffalo, and fired eight or ten shots into the herd, with no visible efiect. The animals nearest the hunters retreated as they advanced, but the great body of the herd was no more disturbed or con- scious of danger than if a couple of mosquitos had alighted among them. After an hour of this fruitless eflFort, the hunters gave it up, alleging that their rifle was so foul and badly sighted as to be worthless. They rejoined us, and we came away, leaving nine-tenths of the vast herd exactly where we found them. And there they doubtless are sleeping at this moment, about three miles from us. We are near the heart of the buflfalo region. Tlie stages from the west that met us here this evening report the sight of millions within the last two days. Their trails chequer the prairie in every direction. A company of Pike's Peakers killed thirteen near this point a few days since. Eight were killed yesterday at the next station west of this by simply stampeding a herd and driving them over a high creek-bank, where so many broke their necks. Buffalo-meat is hanging or lying all around us, and a calf two or three months old is tied to a stake just beside our wagons. He was taken by rushing a herd up a steep creek-bank; wliich so many could not possibly climb at once; this one was picked out in the melee as most worth having, and taken with a rope. Though fast tied and with but a short tether, he is true game, and makes at whoever goes near him with desperate intent to butt the intruder 84: THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO. over. We met or passed to-daj two parties of Pike's Peakers who had respectively lost three oxen or steers, stampeded last night by herds of buffalo. The mules at the express stations have to be carefully watched to pre- serve them from a similar catastrophe — to their owners. I d-o not like the flesh of this wild ox. It is tough and not juicy. I do not forget that our cookery is of the most unsophisticated pattern — carrying us back to the age of the building of the Pyramids, at least — but I would much rather see an immense herd of buffalo on the prairie than' eat the best of them. The herbage hereabout is nearly all the short, strong grass known as the buffalo-grass, and is closely fed down ; w^e are far beyond the stakes of the land-sur- veyor — beyond the usual haunts of white men. The Santa Fe trail is far south of us ; the California is con- siderably north. Yery probably, the buffalo on Solo- mon's Fork were never hunted by white men till this spring. Should one of these countless herds take a fancy for a man-hunt, our riflemen would find even the express-wagons no protection. Though our road is hardly two months old, yet we passed two graves on it to-day. One is that of an in- fant, born in a tent of the wife of one of the station- masters on her way to his post, and which lived but a day ; the other that of a Missourian on his way to Pike's Peak, who was accidentally shot in taking a rifle from his wagon. His party seems to have been singularly unfortunate. A camp or two further on, a hurricane overtook them and tore their six wagons into oven-wood; they were able to make but three passable wagons out THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 85 • of the remains. Their loss in other property was seri- ous ; and they sustained much bodily harm. One more of them was buried a camp or two further on. Tliose whom we meet here coming down confirm the worst news we have had from the Peak. There is scarcely any gold there ; those who dig cannot average two shillings per day ; all who can get away are leaving; Denver and Auraria are nearly deserted ; terrible sufferT ings have been endured on the Plains, and more must yet be encountered ; hundreds would gladly work for their board, but cannot find employment — in short, Pike's Peak is an exploded bubble, which thousands must bitterly rue to the end of their days. Such is the tenor of our latest advices. I have received none this side of Leavenworth that contradict them. My inform- ant says all are getting away who can, and that we shall find the region nearly deserted. That is likely, but we shall see. A young clerk with whom I conversed at supper gave me a little less discouraging account ; but even he, having frozen his feet on the winter journey out, had had enough of gold-hunting, and was going home to his parents in Indiana, to stick to school for a few years. I commended that as a wise resolution. [N'ext morning, after we had started on our opposite ways, I was ap- prised by our conductor that said clerk was a woman ! I had not dreamed of such a thing ; but his more prac- tical or more suspicious eyes had seen through her dis- guise at once. We heard more of her at Denver — quite enough more — but this may as well be left untold. yni. LAST OF THE BUFFALO. Eeisinger's Creek, Station No. 13, ) Pike's Peak Express Co., May 31, 1859. f I WOULD rather not bore the public with buffalo. 1 fully realize that the subject is not novel — that Irving, and Cooper, and many others, have written fully and admirably upon it ; and that the traveler's enthusiastic recital falls coldly on the ear of the distant, critical, un- sympathizing reader. Yet I insist on writing this once more on buffalo, promising then to drop the subject, as we pass out of the range of the buffalo before night. All day yesterday, they darkened the earth around us, often seemiug to be drawn up like an army in battle array on the ridges and adown their slopes a mile or so south of us — often on the north as well. They are rather shy of the little screens of straggling timber on the creek-bottoms — doubtless from their sore experience of Indians lurking therein to discharge arrows at them as they went down to drink. If they feed in the grass of the narrow valleys and ravines, they are careful to have a part of the herd on the ridges which overlook them, and with them the surrounding country for miles. And, when an alarm is given, they all rush furiously off in the direction which the leaders presume that of safety. This is what gives us such excellent opportunities for regarding them to the best advantage. They are mov- LAST OF THE BUFFALO. 87 ing northward, and are still mainly south of our track. Whenever alarmed, they set off on their awkward but effective canter to the great herds still south, or to haunts with which they are comparatively familiar, and wherein they have hitherto found safety. This neces- sarily sends those north of us across our roads often but a few rods in front of us, even when they had started a mile away. Then a herd will commence running across a hundred rods ahead of us, and, the whole blindly fol- lowing their leader, we will be close upon them before the last will have cleared the track. Of course, they sometimes stop and tack, or, seeing us, sheer off and cross further ahead, or split into two lines ; but the gen- eral impulse, when alarmed, is to follow blindly and at full speed, seeming not to inquire or consider from what quarter danger is to be apprehended. What strikes the stranger with most amazement is their immense numbers. I know a million is a great many, but I am confident we saw that number yester- day. Certainly, all we saw could not have stood on ten square miles of ground. Often, the country for miles on either hand seemed quite black with them. The soil is rich, and well matted with their favorite grass. Yet it is all (except a very little on the creek-bottoms, near to timber) eaten down like an overtaxed sheep-pasture in a dry August. Consider that we have traversed more than one hundred miles in width since we first struck them, and that for most of this distance the buf- falo have been constantly in sight, and that they con- tinue for some twenty-five miles further on — this being the breadth of their present range, which has a length 88 LAST OF THE BUFFALO. of perhaps a thousand miles — and you have some ap- proach to an idea of their countless myriads. I doubt whether the domesticated horned cattle of the United States equal the numbers, while they must fall consider- ably short in weight, of these wild ones. Margaret Fuller long ago observed that the Illinois prairies seemed to repel the idea of being new to civilized life and industry — that they, with their borders of trees and belts of timber, reminded the traveler rather of the parks and spacious fields of an old country like England — that you were constantly on the involuntary look-out for the chateaux, or at least the humbler farm-houses, which should diversify such a scene. True as this is or was of Illinois, the resemblance is far more striking here, where the grass is all so closely pastured and the cattle are seen in such vast herds on every ridge. The timber, too, aids the illusion, seeming to have been re- duced to the last degree consistent with the wants of a grazing country, and to have been left only on the steep creek-banks where grass would not grow. It is hard to realize that this is the center of a region of wilderness and solitude, so far as the labors of civilized man are concerned — that the first wagon passed through it some two months ago. But the utter absence of houses or buildings of any kind, and our unbridged, unworked road, winding on its way for hundreds of miles without a track other than of bufi'alo intersecting or leading away from it on either hand, bring us back to the reality. I shall pass lightly over the hunting exploits of our party. A good many shots have been fired — certainly LAST OF TUB BUFFALO. 89 not by me ; even were I in the habit of making war on nature's children, I would as soon think of shooting my neighbor's oxen as these great, clumsy, harmless, crea- tures. If they were scarce, I might comi^rehend the idea of hunting them for sport ; here, they are so abun- dant that you might as well hunt your neighbor's geese. And, while there have been several shots fired by our party at point-blank, distance, I have reason for my hope that no buffalo has experienced any personal in- convenience therefrom. For this impunity, the foulness of the rifle has had to answer in part ; the greenness of the sportsmen is perhaps equally responsible for it. But then we have had no horse or mule out of our regular teams, and the candid will admit that a coach-and-four is not precisely the fittest turn-out for a hunting party. I write in the station-tent (having been driven from our wagon by the operation of greasing its wheels, which was found to interfere with the steadiness of my hastily- improvised table), with the buffalo visible on the ridges south and every way but north of us. They were very close down to us at daylight, and, till the increasing light revealed distinctly our position, since which they have kept a respectful distance. But a party of our drivers, who went back seven miles on mules last even- ing, to help get our rear w^agon out of a gully in which it had mired and stuck fast, from which expedition they returned at midnight, report that they found the road absolutely dangerous from the crowds of buffalo feeding on either side, and running across it— that, the night being quite dark, they were often in great danger of being run over and run down by the headlong brutes. 90 LAST OF THE BrFFALO. They were obliged to stand still for minutes, and lire their revolvers right and left, to save their lives and their mules. The superintendent of this division, Mr. Fuller, had a narrow escaj)e day before yesterday. He was rid- ing his mule along our road, utterly unconscious of danger, when a herd of buffalo north of the road were stampeded by an emigrant train, and set off full gallop in a south-westerly direction, as usual. A slight ridge hid them from Mr. F.'s sight till their leader came full tilt against his mule, knocking him down, and going over him at full speed. Mr. F. of course fell with the dying mule, and I presume lay very snug by his side while the buffaloes made a clear sweep over the con- cern — he firing his revolver rapidly, and thus inducing many of the herd to shear off on one side or the other. He rose stunned and bruised, but still able to make his way to the station — with an increased respect for buf- falo, I fancy, and a disposition to give them a reason- ably wide berth hereafter. But he has gone out this morning in quest of the mired coach, and our waiting for his return gives me this chance to write without encroaching on the hours due to sleep. Two nights ago, an immense herd came down upon a party of Pike's Peakers camped just across the creek from this station, and, (it being dark) were with diffi- culty prevented from trampling down tents, cattle, and people. Some fifty shots were fired into them before they could be turned. And now our station-master has just taken his gun to scare them off so as to save our mules from a stampede. LAST OF THE BUFFALO. 91 But tlie teams have returned with the missing coach, and I must break off and pack to go on. Station, 15, Prairie Dog Creek, May 31, evening. We have made fifty-five miles since we started about nine this morning, and our present encampment is on a creek running to the Republican, so that we have bid- den a final adieu to Solomon's Fork, and all other affluents of the Smoky Hill branch of the Kansas. We traveled on the "divide" between this and the northern branch of the Kansas for some miles to-day, and finally came over to the waters of that stream (the Repub- lican), which we are to strike some eighty miles further on. We are now just half way from Leavenworth to Denver, and our coach has been a week making this distance ; so that with equal good fortune we may expect to reach the land of gold in another week. The coaches we met here to-night have been just a week on the way, having (like us) lost a day, but not, like us, by high water : their bother was with wild Indians — Arapahoes mainly — whom they report to be in great numbers on our route — not hostile to us, but intent on begging or stealing, and stopping the wagons peremp- torily till their demands are complied with. They are at war with the Pawnees, and most of their men are now on the war-path ; their women and children are largely camped around the Express Company's Stations, living as they best may. The Pawnees, I believe, are mainly or entirely south of our road. The Arapahoes boast of triumphs and slaughters which I am tempted 92 LAST OF THE BUFFALO. to hope, have been or will be reciprocated. Indian wars with each other are, in onr day, cruel and cow- ardly plundering forays, fitted to excite only disgust. As we left Station 14 this morning, and rose from the creek-bottom to the high prairie, a great herd of buffalo were seen in and around our road, who began to run first north, then south, many standing as if confused and undecided which course to take, and when at last they all started southward, we were so near them that our driver stopped his mnles to let the immense im- petuous herd pass witliout doing ns any harm. Our sportsman's Sharp was not loaded at the time ; it after- ward was, and fired into a herd at fair distance, but I did not see anything drop. After this, they were seen in greater or less numbers on the ridges and high prairie, mainly south of us, but they either kept a res- pecttul distance or soon took one. We have n6t seen one for the last twenty-five miles ; but they are now considerably further this way than they were a few days since ; and as every foot of the way thus far, and (I hear) further, is carpeted with buffalo-grass, not here eaten down, and as buffalo-paths and other evidences that this is their favorite feeding-ground are everywhere present, I presume they will be here in the course of a week. But enough of them. And let me here proffer my acknowledgments to sundry other quadrupeds with whom I have recently formed a passing aoquaintance. Tlie prairie-wolf was the first of these gentry to pay his respects to us. He is a sneaking, cowardly little wretch, of a dull or dirty white color, much resembling a small, short-bodied dog set up on pretty long legs. LAST OF THE BUFFALO. 93 1 believe his only feat entitling him to rank as a beast of prey consists in sometimes, when hard pressed by hunger, digging out a prairie-dog and making a meal of him. His usual provender is the carcass — no matter how putrid — of any dead buffalo, mule, or ox that he may find exposed on the prairies. He is a paltry creature. But the gray-wolf — who is also a denizen of the prairies — (I think we have seen at least a dozen of the species to-day) — is a scoundrel of much more imposing caliber. He delights to lurk around the outskirts of a herd of buffalo, keeping out of sight and unsuspected in the ravines and creek-timber, so far as possible ; and wo to the unlucky calf that strays (which he seldom does) outside of the exterior line of defence formed by the bulls. If very large and hungry, the gray-wolf will sometimes manage to cut a cow off from the herd, and, interposing betw^een her and her companions, detain or drive her further away, until she is beyond the hope of rescue, when her doom is sealed. His liveliest hope, however, is that of finding a buffalo whom some hunter has wounded, so that he cannot keep up with the herd, especially should it be stampeded. Let him once get such a one by himself, and a few snaps at his ham- strings, taking excellent care to keep out of the way of his horns, insures that the victim will have ceased to be a buffalo, and become mere wolf-meat before another morning. It is impossible for a stranger to the prairies to realize the impudence of these prairie-lawyers. Of some twenty of them that I have seen within the last two days, I 94: LAST OF THE BUFFALO. think not six have really run from us. One that we saw just before us, two hours ago, kept on his way across the prairie, stopping occasionally to take a good look at us, but not hurrying himself in the least on our account, though for some minutes within good rifle range. Once to-day, our superintendent sent a ball after one who was making very deliberate time away from us, hitting him in a quarter where the compliment should have expedited his movements ; but it did not seem to have that effect. It is very common for these wolves to follow at night a man traveling the road on a mule, not making any belligerent demonstrations, but waiting for whatever may turn up. Sometimes the ex- press-wagons have been followed in this way, but I think that unusual. But this creature is up to any thing wherein there is a chance for game. The prairie-dog is the funny fellow of these parts — frisky himself, and a source of merriment to otliers. He dens in villages or towns, on any dry, grassy ground — usually on the dryest part of the high prairie — and his hole is superficially a very large ant-hill, with the necessary orifice in its center. On this ant-hill sits the proprietor — a chunky little fellow, in size between a gray squirrel and a rabbit — say about half a woodchuck. "When we approach, he raises the cry of danger — no bark at all, but something between the piping of a frog on a warm spring evening, and the noise made by a very young puppy — then drops into his hole and is silent and invisible. The holes are not very regularly placed, but some thirty feet apart ; and when I say that I believe we have to-day passed within sight of at least LAST OF THE BUFFALO. 95 three square miles of these holes, the reader can guess how many of these animals must exist here, even sup- posing that there is usually but one to each hole. I judge that there cannot be less than a hundred square miles of prairie-dog towns within the present buffalo range. That the prairie-dog and the owl — of a small, brown- backed, white-bellied species — do live harmoniously in the same hole I know, for I have seen it. 1 presume the owl i)ays for his lodgings like a gentleman, probably by turning in some provisions toward the supply of the common table. If so, this is the most successful ex- ample of industrial and household association yet fur- nished. That the rattlesnake is ever admitted as a third partner, I indignantly deny. 'No doubt he has been found in the prairie-dog's home — it would be just like him to seek so cozy a nest — but he doubtless entered like a true border-ruffian, and contrived to make him- self a deal more free than welcome. Politeness, or (if you please) prudence, may have induced the rightful owner to submit to a joint tenancy at will — the will of the tenant, not that of the rightful landlord — but no con- sent was ever given, unless under constraint of that po- tent logic which the intruder carries in his head, and warning whereof proceeds from the tip of his tail. Of antelope, I have seen many, but not so near at hand as I could wish. I defer speaking of them, in the hope of a better acquaintance. A w^ord now of the face of the country : For more than a hundred miles back, I have seen no stone, and think there is none, except at a great depth. 96 LAST OF THE BUFFALO. Solomon's fork, where we left its vicinity, is now a stream two rods wide, running but four to six inches of water over a bed of pure sand, at a depth of some three or four hundred feet below the high prairie level of the country. I infer that there is no rock in place for at least that depth. Tlie subsoil of the prairies is generally a loamy clay, resting on a bed of sand. The violent though not frequent rains of this region form sheets of water, which rush down the slopes into the water-courses, which they rapidly swell into torrents, which, meeting no resistance from rocks or roots of trees, are constantly deepening or widening the ravines which run down to the creeks on every side. These gullies or gorges have originally steep, perpendicular banks, over which, in times of heavy rain, sheets of water go tumbling and roaring into the bottom of the ravines, washing down the sod- den, semi-liquid banks, and sending them to thicken the waters of the Kansas and the Missouri. Thus the prai- rie, save some narrow, irregular ridges, or "divides," is gradually scooped and worn into broader or narrower valleys, some of which have three or four little preci- pices at intervals up their sides, where they formerly had but one, and will eventually have none. For still the soil is washing away and running off to the Gulf of Mexico ; and if this country should ever be cultivated, the progress of this disaster would be materially accele- rated. It needs to be timbered before it can be fit for the habitation of civilized man. But still a few low cotton-woods and elms aloug the margins of the larger streams — not a cord of wood in all to each square mile — are all the timber that is to be seen. I hear of some LAST OF THE BUFFALO. 97 poor oak on the broader streams, and an occasional wliite-ash, but do not see them. The prairie-wind shaking the wagon so that I write in it with difficulty, bespeaks a storm at hand. Adieu ! 6 IX. THE AMERICAN DESERT. Station 18, P. P. Express Co., June 2. The clouds, which threatened rain at *the station on Prairie-Dog Creek, whence I wrote two days ago, were dissipated by a violent gale, which threatened to over- turn the heavy wagon in which my fellow-passengers and I were courting sleep — had it stood broadside to the wind, it must have gone over. It is customary, I learn, to stake down the wagons encamped on the open prairie; in the valleys of the creeks, where the com- pany's stations are located, this precaution is deemed superfluous. But the winds which sweep the high prai- ries of this region are terrible ; and the few trees that grow thinly along the creek-bottoms rarely venture to raise their heads above the adjacent bluffs, to which they owe their doubtful hold on existence. Tor more than a hundred miles back, the soil has been steadily degenerating, until here, where we strike the Republican, which has been far to the north of us since we left it at Fort Riley, three hundred miles back, we seem to have reached the acme of barrenness and desolation. We left this morning, Station 17, on a little creek entitled Gouler, at least thirty miles back, and did not see a tree and but one bunch of low shrubs in a dry water-course throughout our dreary morning ride, till we came in sight of the Republican, which has a THE AMERICAN DESERT. 99 little — a very little — scrubby cotton-wood nested in and along its bluffs just here; but tliere is none beside for miles, save a little lurking in a ravine wliich makes down to the river from the north. Of grass there is little, and that little of miserable quality — either a scanty furze or coarse alkaline sort of rush, less fit for. food than physic. Soil there is none but an inch or so of intermittent grass-root tangle, based an what usually seems to be a thin stratum of clay, often washed off so as to leave nothing but a slightly argillaceous sand. Along the larger w^ater-courses — this one especially — this sand seems to be as pure as Sahara can boast. The dearth of water is fearful. Although the whole region is deeply seamed and gullied by water-courses — now dry, but in rainy weather mill-streams — no springs burst from their steep sides. We have not passed a drop of living water in all our morning's ride, and but a few pailfuls of muddy moisture at the bottoms of a very few of the fast-drying sloughs or sunken holes in the beds of dried-up creeks. Yet there has been much rain here this season, some of it not long ago. But this is a region of sterility and thirst. If utterly unfed, the grass of a season w^ould hardly suffice, when dry, to nourish a prairie-fire. Even the animals have deserted us. No buffalo have been seen this year wdthin many miles of us, though their old paths lead occasionally across this country ; I presume they pass rapidly through it, as I should ur- gently advise them to do ; not a gray-wolf has honored us wdth his company to-day — he prefers to live where there is something to eat — the prairie-dog also wisely 100 THE AMERICAN DESERT. shuns this land of starvation ; no animal but the gopher (a little creature, between a mouse and a ground-squir- rel) abounds here; and he burrows deep in the sand and picks up a living, I cannot guess how ; while a few hawks and an occasional prairie-wolf (cayota) lives by picking here and there a gopher. They must find him disgustingly lean. I would match this station and its surroundings against any other scene on our continent for desolation. From the high prairie over which we approach it, you overlook a grand sweep of treeless desert, through the middle of which flows the Kepublican, usually in sev- eral shallow streams separated by sandbars or islets — its whole volume being far less than that of the Mohawk at Utica, though it has drained above this point an area equal to that of Connecticut. Of the few scrubby cot- ton-woods lately cowering nnder the bluffs at this point, most have been cut for the uses of the station, though logs for its embryo house are drawn from a little clump, eight miles distant. A broad bed of sand indicates that the volume of water is sometimes a hundred-fold its present amount, though it will doubtless soon be far less than it now is. Its average depth cannot now ex- ceed six inches. On every hand, and for many miles above and below, the country above the blufis is such as we have passed over this morning. A dead mule — bitten in the jaw this morning by a rattlesnake — lies here as if to coiiiplete the scene. Off the five weeks old track to Pike's Peak, all is dreary solitude and silence. Speaking of rattlesnakes — I hasten to retract the THE AMEKICAK DESEET. 101 skepticism avowed in a former letter as to the usual and welcome residence of these venomous serpents in the prairie-dog's burrow. The evidence of the fact is too direct and reliable to be gainsajed. A credible witness testifies that he and others once undertook to drown out a prairie-dog in his domicil, and, when sufficient water had been rapidly poured in, out came a prairie-dog, an owl, and a rattlesnake all together. In another case, a tremendous rain raised a creek so that it suddenly over- flowed a prairie-dog town, when the general stampede of prairie-dogs, owls, and rattlesnakes was a sight to behold. It is idle to attempt holding out against facts ; so I have pondered this anomaly until I think I clearly comprehend it. The case is much like that of some newspaper establishments, whose proprietors, it is said, find it convenient to keep on their stafif " a broth of a boy " from Tipperary, standing six feet two in his stock- ings and measuring a yard or more across the shoulders, who stands ready, with an illegant brogue, a twinkle in his eye, and a hickory sapling firmly grasped in his dexter fist, to respond to all choleric, peremptory cus- tomers, who call of a morning, hot with wrath and bristling with cowhide, to demand a parley with the editor. The cayota is a gentleman of an inquiring, in- vestigating turn, who is an adept at excavation, and whose fondness for prairie-dog is more ardent than flat- tering. To dig one out and digest him would be an easy task, if he were alone in his den, or with only the owl as his partner; but when the firm is known or strongly suspected to be Prairie-Dog, Rattlesnake & Co., the cayota's passion for subterranean researches is 102 THE AMERICAN DESERT. uiateriallj cooled. The rattlesnake is to the concern what the fighting editor is to the journalistic organiza- tions aforesaid. And thus, while my faith is enlarged, is mj reason satisfied. A word now on the antelope. I liked him when I first saw him, days ago ; I then wished for a better ac- quaintance, which wish has since been gratified ; and sin«ce I dined with him (that is, off" of him) my esteem has ripened into afi'ection. Of the many antelopes I have seen, I judge a majority considerably larger than the deer of our eastern forests — not so tall nor (perhaps) 80 long, but heavier in body, while hardly less swift or less graceful in motion. He is the only animal I have seen here that may justly boast of either grace or beauty. His flesh is tender and delicate — the choicest eating 1 have found in Kansas. Shy and fleet as he is, he is the chief sustenance at this season of the Indians out of the present bufi'alo range. An old hunter assures n>e that, with all his timidity, he is easily taken by the knowing. To follow him is absurd ; his scent is too keen, his fear too great ; but go upon a high prairie, to a knoll or swell whence you can overlook fifteen or twenty square miles ; there crouch in a hollow or in the grass, and hoist your handkerchief, or some red, flutter- ing scarf on a light pole, which you wave gently and patiently in the air ; soon the antelope, if there be one within sight, perceives the strange apparition : his cu- riosity is excited; it masters his caution; he makes toward the strange object, and keeps drawing nearer and nearer till he is within fifteen or twenty rods. The rest requires no instruction. THE AMERICAIJ DESERT. 103 Station 21, June 3, (evening), 1859. Since I wrote the foregoing, we have traveled ninety miles up the south branch of the Kepublican (which forks just above Station 18) and have thus pursued a course somewhat south of west. In all these ninety miles, we have passed just two live streams making in from the south — both together running scarcely water enough to turn a grind-stone. In all these ninety miles, we have not seen wood enough to make a decent pig- pen. The bottom of the river is perhaps half a mile in average width ; the soil in good part clay and covered with a short, thin grass ; the bluffs are naked sand-heaps ; the rock, in the rare cases where any is exposed, an odd conglomerate of petrified clay with quartz and some specks that resemble cornelian. Beside this, in some of the bluffs, where clay overlies and is blended, under peculiar circumstances, with the sand below it, a sort of rock seems to be formed or in process of formation. Water is obtained from the apology for a river, or by digging in the sand by its side ; in default of wood, cor- rals (cattle-pens) are formed at the stations by laying up a heavy wall of clayey earth flanked by sods, and thus excavating a deep ditch on the inner side, except at the portal, which is closed at night by running a wagon into it. The tents are sodded at their bases ; houses of sods are to be constructed so soon as may be. Such are the shifts of human ingenuity in a country which has probably not a cord of growing wood to each town- ship of land. Six miles further up, this fork of the Kepublican emerges from its sandy bed, in which it has been lost 104 THE AMERICAN DESERT. for the twentj-five miles next above. Of course, it loses in volume in passing through such a land of drouth. Probably thirty times to-day we have crossed the broad sandy beds of creeks running down from the high prai- ries — creeks which in winter and early spring are sweep- ing torrents, but now are wastes of thirsty sand. Thus has it been for ninety miles — thus is it for many miles above and I presume many also below. The road from Leavenworth to Denver had to be taken some fifty miles north of its due course to obtain even su