WILSON. 17 purchased and homesteaded, and as far back as the lovely valley of Wolf or Paradise creek, some 14 miles to the northward, are fine stock and sheep ranches and farms. Water in this country is very plentiful. South of the town three miles is the living current Saline, and then the Solomon—all having tributaries of more or less prominence. The magnificent pasturage of this part of Kansas makes it the paradise of the wool- grower and stock-raiser. The best of well water is also available at nearly every point, and there is a tank here having a capacity of 30,000 gallons of delicious water, which is obtained 48 feet from the surface; and from this point to Hays, where the railway is built on the divide between the Smoky Hill and Saline rivers, water is found at depths corresponding to the undyla- tions of the track, and its elevation above the Smoky, and a short distance either north or south of the line is found in springs, streams and pools. Coal is found in large quantities all through Russell County, on the banks of the Smoky Hill river and its tributaries, in veins from one to four feet in thickness, and though that found so far has not been of sufficiently good quality to burn in the locomotives, it affords cheap and easily obtained fuel for the settlers. - The next place we stop at, fourteen miles farther on, is Bunker Hill, the county seat, and settled by a colony from Ohio in the spring of 1871; and next to that we pass through Russell, an eriterprising trading post and town, the third anniversary of whose settlement was of the Smoky Hill river. A few miles north is the