122 WESTERN INCIDENTS.

tages of your location ; and what I have seen to-day convinces me
that you will not be slow to appropriate all the advantages you
possess. No people of this country have more of intelligence,
more of enterprise, more of the American Yankee go-ahead-
ativeness than the people of Chicago. [Applause.] I say again,
there are but two cities on this continent that can compete with
you and your posterity for the palm of greatness.

“ And now, as to the excursion. I have said before, and I re-
peat it here, that it was on the most comprehensive scale of mag-
nificence that I have ever seen. The Company have stopped at
nothing that would promote our happiness or bring within our
grasp all the intelligence we could possibly acquire on this subject.
They stopped at nothing, and there is not a member of that ex-
cursion party who would not admit the perfect organization that
was brought about by the managers of the excursion. It was
thoroughly organized—and, traversing this continent more than fif-
teen hundred miles, having to use different modes of conveyance,
transporting this great company from one point to another with-
out the least confusion or the least delay, was a work that re-
quired brains as well as generosity. ‘Their arrangements were all
perfect, and the enjoyment of the excursionists was as great as it
was possible that it could be made by all that human ingenuity
could give, and I believe there is not a man among them but feels
to-day, in his heart, gratitude for the opportunities it gave him to
be acquainted with our great country. Here I may also say, sir,
that we took away out there, among the Pawnees, and brought
face to face with barbarism, almost the entire instrumentalities of
our highest civilization. We had there a printing-press; a
morning paper was printed in the Platte Valley, beyond the hun-
dreth meridian, and while the Pawnees were dancing their wild
dances, the printers were working off a description of the scene.
The spectacle was a novel and a gratifying one, and I doubt if, in
the history of these times, which amaze and surprise men, there
has been anything more surprising than took place on those re-
mote plains. With the printing-press we had the telegraph, that