KANSAS

AND THE

COUNTRY BEYOND

ON THE LINE OF THE

UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY,

HASTHRN DIVISION,

FROM THE MISSOURI TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

PARTLY FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATION, AND PARTLY FROM IN-
FORMATION DRAWN FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES.

WRITTEN IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE PITTSBURGH GAZETTE.

By JOSIAH COPLEY.

GAith » Mug.

PHILADELPHIA:
& B. LIPPINCOTT & Ca.
1867.

 
 
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CONTENTS.

PAGE
IntRopuctory ArticLe.— The Territory beyond the Missi
— The two Great Railroads — The Excursion 5
Lerrer I.— Arrival at Clear Creek, the end of the finished Road
— Meeting of the Excursionists at Clear Creek — Ellsworth —
Arrival at Fort Harker — Curious Rocks—Prairie Grass —
Country last passed over— Fort Harker— Another samc
Leave-taking—Expedition to Pond Creek : 11
Lerrer I].—Tornadoes and Rain— Party to Pond Creek—A
Ranch —Solidity of the Earth — Wells tae of the
Smoky Hill . 16
Lerrer III.—Continuance of the Flood— _ Change { in the Soil —
Buffalo Grass dying out— Wild Plums and other Fruit . 19
Lerrer IV.—The Flood—The Question of Routes 21

Lerrzr V.— Prairie Dogs—Rambling Observations— Enterprise
of o.oo of Chicago with this State and
Road ; . se

Letter VI.— Water falling—A New Hotel — Return of twoof the
Pond Creek Party —Observations upon the Country above .

Letter VII.—Arrival at Lawrence—Flood in the ona Hill
and Kansas . . . . . . . :

Letter VIII.—Trees in Kansas

Lerrer 1X.—Mineral Resources of Kansas—Magnesian Lime-
stone, its abundance and excellence as a Building Material —
Other Varieties of Stone—Marble—General Remarks .

Lerrrer X.—Mineral Resources of Kansas, continued —Coal—
Salt — Gypsum — Alum —Iron

Letter XI.—Towns in Kansas—Leavenworth—Rivalry with

Kansas City —Lawrence—Its Location, Beauty and History
— Swift Retribution—Brief Mention of an old Friend .

Lerrer XII.—Towns in Kansas, continued ,

Letter XIII.— Towns in Kansas, concluded —The Neosho Val-
ley —Seasons in Kansas—A word to such as may think of
Emigrating ae

(8)

24

31
34

37

4]

45
50

53
4 CONTENTS
PAGE
Lerrer XIV.— Education in Kansas—The Free School System
—State Normal School—Peculiar Mode of Teaching —State
Agricultural College— University of Kansas— Equality and
Commingling of the Sexes in the Higher Schools . . . 56

Lerrer XV.—Return of the Pond Creek Party—The Line to
Denver— Pine Timber—Coal— The Mountain Snows must
be avoided—The Route and Distance to New Mexico—
Superiority of the more Southern Route—Surveying Party. 60

Lerrer X VI.— General Subject of Routes discussed — Description
of the Valley of the Platte—The Region between the Heads
of the Platte and the Sierra Nevada—Great Utility of both
Roads—The Route beyond Kansas— Fertility of the Coun-
try on the Arkansas and Purgatoire Rivers—Immense De-
posits of Coal — Pine Timber —New Mexico, its Minerals and

other Resources . . . . . . : . . 64
Letrer XVII.— Arizona—California . . . . . . 70
Lerrer XVIII.—Length of the respective Routes— Latitude

and Longitude of the Principal Points . . : . . 74
Lerrer XIX.— Eastern Connections— Table of Distances . . 76

Lerrmer XX.— Branch Roads—To Galveston from three points
in Kansas—To Denver —Down the Rio Grande into Mexico
—To Guaymas—To San Diego—Hffect upon Mexico—

General Remarks . . . . . . . 78
Letrer XXI.— Will it Pay? . . . : . . . 82
Lerrer XXII.—The March of Empire ~ oe ele 84

THE MAP.

Tuts is probably the most accurate and reliable Railroad Map that has ever been
offered to the public. It is a fac-simile of the official map prepared from the most
recent surveys and explorations under the authority of the Government at Washing-
ton, and was drawn and engraved by W. J. Knzzznr, Esq., of the Indian Bureau, ex-
pressly for this work. The lines of both the great Pacific Railroads are laid down
as nearly as possible as they are to be, and with equal fairness and fidelity. It was
not deemed to be either honest or politic to insult the intelligence of the country by
stretching a favorite line, like a ribbon, across the continent, and attempting to
ignore, as far as possible, all other roads that are not subsidiary to it. All that is
essential to a full and fair understanding of the great question of routes from the
Missouri to the Pacific is given.
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Or the vast territory embraced within our national boundaries,
stretching from ocean to ocean, three-fifths lie west of the Mis-
sissippi, that great Mediterranean river which bisects it from
north to south, dividing it into two vast and strongly distinctive
and dissimilar sections. In this estimate I do not include the
territory recently purchased from Russia. The one is partially
occupied in all its parts; the other is only beginning to be oceu-
pied around its borders. The one is now the home of more than
nine-tenths of our people; a century hence, it may be, the dwell-
ing-place of a majority of the American people will be in the
other. The one is a land of forests and navigable rivers, with
mountain systems of moderate altitude, and with topographical
features greatly diversified, often beautiful, but rarely grand; the
other, for the most part, is made up of vast prairies of surpassing
beauty and fertility, and of stupendous mountains, rich in almost
all varieties of minerals, yet presenting barriers to human pro-
gress more formidable, perhaps, than are to be found anywhere
else on the earth’s surface. The one is a good country, surpass-
ingly good, as the past progress and prosperity of our people
abundantly attest; but no man can travel long over the match-
less region which lies beyond the river,—a garden three times
the area of France, with mountains beyond sufficient to supply
the ever-advancing world with precious metals, and an ocean
beyond them, with more people upon its shores and islands than
are found on all the other waters of the globe,— without coming
to the strong conviction that the trans-Mississippi section is still
better.

But this portion of the earth’s surface is as unique as it is
stupendous. While one part is sublime in altitude and rugged
grandeur, the other and nearer part is equally so in its vast ex-
tent and its continuous yet ever-varying beauty. Those prairies

: . (5)
6 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

look as if an ocean, heaving in grand long swells, had become
suddenly indurated and clothed with luxuriant grass and flowers.
Day after day a man may travel, and still one word will charac-
terize all he sees— Beautiful! Yet there is no monotony, for
every mile reveals beauties in new and peculiar forms. Such is
all Kansas, and such is all the country south of Kansas, from the
mountains to the flat grounds which skirt the Mississippi and
the Gulf.

To this general description, however, the greater part of the
valley of the Platte is exceptional. Broad, flat, treeless and
desolate, without lateral streams, and with scanty vegetation, it
does not attract settlers. As the Union Pacific Railway, Kastern
Division, is pushed forward, section after section, up the Kansas
—now 250 miles beyond the Missouri— settlers in thousands
follow it, and even precede it, so that already numerous towns
have grown up where, two years ago, Indians and buffaloes were
roaming, each surrounded with well-tilled and productive farms.
The Union Pacific Railroad of the Platte, however, has only
drawn settlements after it about a hundred miles west of the
Missouri. Beyond that the country remains almost as desolate
as ever.

The centre of Kansas is very nearly the geographical centre of
the United States. It may, therefore, with great propriety be
called the Centrat Stats. This is well, for itis perhaps the most
fertile, as it is unquestionably the most beautiful, of the great sister-
hood; and through its gushing heart, as I believe, the great artery
of the world’s commerce is destined to flow. There is hardly a
sterile spot, as there is not a miasmatic swamp, nor a rugged
mountain, within its broad domain. I had heard much of Kan-
sas before I saw it, but the half had not been told. Last fall I was
through it as far as Fort Riley and Junction City; and although
it was in November, when everything was sere and dry, I was
much impressed with its beauties and its almost boundless capa-
bilities. This year, as one of the excursionists over the Union
Pacific Railway, I again visited it in June, when Nature had
arrayed herself in her most gorgeous attire. The effect upon my
mind was still more impressive, and I resolved to take time to
acquaint myself well with everything calculated to interest the
minds of such as had thoughts of emigrating, and of all who take
THE TWO GREAT RAILROADS. 1

an interest in the greatness, the grandeur, and the boundless
resources of our national heritage.

THE TWO GREAT RAILROADS.

It is rather an awkward and embarrassing circumstance that
the road which runs up the valley of the Platte, and that which
runs up the valley of the Kansas, should both bear nearly the
same name. The first is the Union Pacific Railroad; the other
the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division. This sameness of
name arose out of the original programme, which was, that the
Kansas road should be carried up the Republican Fork of the
Kansas river, thence across the Platte river at the 100th meridian,
and there unite with the Platte road. But by Act of Congress,
of July, 1866, the Kansas Company were authorized to build their
road up the Smoky Hill instead of the Republican, and make
their junction with the other road at Denver, or that vicinity, at
about the 105th meridian. This change retarded the work on the
Kansas road considerably; but it greatly shortens the line to
Denver, and leads the road through a much better country —one
of good soil, abundance of water, and through a section abound-
ing in coal and pine timber.

But what is of still more importance, the road by the Smoky
Hill route has a slight southern bearing as far as the western line
of Kansas, at which point, or near it, it is in contemplation to
change the direction of the main line to the southwest, through
the southeastern corner of Colorado, and thence, through New
Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California, to San Francisco.
The original plan, however, of pushing on to Denver, is to be car-
ried out. The feasibility and the advantages of this southwestern
route, around the mountains instead of over them, are fully dis-
cussed in my concluding letters; and I trust the reader, who will
favor me with an attentive perusal of the facts and arguments
offered, will agree with me in the opinion that this is by far the
better route to the Pacific.

RAILROADS A NECESSITY IN THAT COUNTRY.
To subdue and occupy such a country as that beyond the Mis-
sissippi, will require greater forces than were employed in the
conquest of the section of our country east of that river, where,
8 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

although very much aided by navigation on the lakes, and on the
Ohio and other rivers, settlement was half a century creeping from
the Alleghenies to the Mississippi, as it had been an entire cen-
tury making its way from the tidewater of the Atlantic to the
western slope of the Alleghenies. In the trans-Mississippi re-
gion, where Nature assumes vaster and sterner features, and where
there are few available rivers to aid in the work, artificial means
of transportation are imperatively necessary, and must first be
supplied. The old process must be inverted. The locomotive
must precede the plough, and the town the farm. Hven Kansas,
with all its fertility except for a comparatively short distance
along its eastern border—could not be occupied in any other
way. Colorado, except a few of the best of its gold mines, is
practically valueless until reached by rail. New Mexico, with its
rich resources, pastoral, agricultural, and mineral, is yet almost
an unknown land to our people, although we have had possession
of it for twenty years. Arizona is still more isolated and un-
known, rich as it is in mineral treasures. California we reach by
sea, and by passing through the territory of a foreign nation.
And what is true of the line here indicated is equally true of that
of the road which runs up the valley of the Platte, and which
opens a way into the territory of the great Central Plateau, and
of the remote Northwest.

THE EXCURSION.

At the invitation of Joon D. Perry, Esq., President of the
Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, a large party
of ladies and gentlemen, including many members of Congress,
set out from Philadelphia on the 31st day of May, 1867, to make
an excursion to Fort Harker, in Kansas, 225 miles west of the
Missouri river, then the terminus of that road. Handsome and
commodious saloon and sleeping-cars were provided, which were
taken entirely through and back, and everything that well-directed
generosity could do to render the excursion pleasant and agree-
able, was done. Col. Samuxzn 8S. Moon, of Philadelphia, who had
charge of the expedition, will be long and cordially remembered
by the excursionists, for the graceful courtesies extended by him
to the members of the party.

As we progressed through State after State, our numbers
THE EXCURSION. 9

augmented, and every accession only added to the social enjoy-
ment.

At St. Louis we remained over the Sabbath, (but indeed we
only reached it that morning for a late breakfast,) and on Monday
afternoon, with more cars and more excursionists, we set off for
Kansas, arriving at Leavenworth for breakfast on Tuesday morn-
ing, 805 miles. Here we had a grand reception —a sumptuous
dinner, a ride to Fort Leavenworth, where we were warmly wel-
comed by Generals Hancock and Horrman, and their ladies; then
aride over the charming heights which overlook the city, the
river, and the beautiful and well-cultivated little valleys which
lay beneath. In the evening we ran over to Lawrence, where we
met a similar reception, had a spirited meeting and quite a plea-
sant time. The next day we started up the matchless valley of
the Kansas, dined at Topeka, and slept at Junction City. The fol-
lowing day we ran on, dined at Salina, and arrived at Clear Creek,
a short distance on this side of Fort Harker, then the end of the
finished road. Here the narrative is taken up in the following
letters. But my object in this publication is not so much to give
an account of the trip as to speak of the country and the great
work which we came out to see.

The following is a list of the excursionists who joined the party
east of the Mississippi:

Hon. Simon Cameron and wife, Pa. J. D. Mallery, Philadelphia.
Hon. Benj. H. Brewster, Att’y Gen., Pa. Anthony Taylor, Philadelphia.
Hon. H. A. Risley, Washington. J. Norris Robinson, Philadelphia.
Miss Risley, Washington. Thomas 8. Stewart, Philadelphia.
Hon. A. F. Stevens and wife, N. H. H. C. Thompson, Philadelphia.
Hon. J. A. Nicholson and wife, Del. J. C. Browne, Philadelphia.

Hon. A. H. Laflin, wife and daughter, B. J. Taylor, Philadelphia.
N. Y. Charles H, Rogers, Philadelphia.
Hon. W. E. Chandler, wife and son, Maj. A. R. Calhoun, Philadelphia Press.

Washington. Francis Wells, Philadelphia Bulletin.
Hon. Frank Jordan and wife, Pa. A. K. Pedrick, Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hon. C. H. Van Wyck, N. Y. G. B. Van Wyck, N. Y.

Hon. B. M. Kitchen, West Virginia. John C. Wyman, New York.
Hon. C. D. Hubbard, West Virginia. J. R. Young, New York Tribune.
Hon. J. L. Thomas, Baltimore. J. R. Fitch, New York World.
Hon. G. 8S. Orth, wife and son, Lafayette, N. B. Hogg and wife, Pittsburgh.

Ind. Miss Nellie Hall, Pittsburgh.

Hon. G. W. Julian, Indiana, E. D. Kennedy, Pittsburgh.
Hon. W. E. Niblack, Indiana, Josiah Copley, Pittsburgh.
J. B. Lippincott and wife, Philadelphia. Wm. McManus, Reading.

W. Hinchman, Philadelphia. Miss McManus, Reading.

KE. M. Paxson, Philadelphia. H. E. Steele, Coatesville, Pa.
John Price Wetherill, Philadelphia. Mrs. Burnside, Pa.

Samuel 8. Moon, Philadelphia, Mrs. Dr. Bobbs, Indianapolis.
10 KANSAS AND THE

Mrs. Usher, son and niece, Indiana.
D. E. Small, York, Pa.

R. R. Robinson, Wilmington, Del.
W. W. Taylor, Baltimore.

J. Birckhead, Baltimore.

C. C. Fulton, Baltimore American.
George Abell, Baltimore.

B. F. Newcomer, Baltimore.

H. A. Riddle, Baltimore.

Wm. W. Taylor, Baltimore.
Frederick Schley, Frederick, Md.
C. C. Beaman, Jr.; Washington.
Marquis de Chambrun, Washington.

COUNTRY BEYOND.

Col. J. E. Schley, West Virginia.
Wm. P. Hubbard, West Virginia.
J. I, Underwood, Indiana.

W. L. Woods, Indiana.

George Rutledge, London, England.
Cyrus Yale, New Orleans.

Gen. G. W. Morgan, Ohio.

H. J. Budd, Kansas.

J. H. Riley, Alta California.

H. G. Howard, Detroit.

M. Rennick, Detroit.

Dr. 8. 8. Ward, Chicago Jour. of Com
J. F. Comstock, Connecticut.

The following named excursionists joined the party at St. Louis

and points west of the Mississippi:

Mr. John D. Perry, Pres’t U. P. R. W.,
B.D,

Col. C. B. Lamborn, Sec’y U. P. R. W.,
E. D., and wife, St. Louis.

Mrs. Perry and Miss Perry, St. Louis.

Miss Annie Pulliam, St. Louis.

Miss Grover, St. Louis.

Edward Hays, St. Louis.

Charles H.-Peck, St. Louis.

John R. Shepley, St. Louis.

R. J. Lockwood and two sons, St. Louis.

Mr. Lackland, St. Louis.

Mr. Robbins, St. Louis.

J. P. Collier, St. Louis.

Mr. D. Collier, St. Louis.

Mr.C.S. Greeley and daughter, St.Louis.

Hon. J. 8. Thomas, St. Louis.

H. F. Zeider, St. Louis Republican.
Wm. Fayel, St. Louis Republican.
D. M. Grisson, St. Louts Hv’g Dispatch.
Mr. Adolphus Meier, St. Louis.
John Meier, St. Louis.

George D. Hall, St. Louis.

Miss Doench, St. Louis.

Mrs. Rodgers, St. Louis.

8S. W. Andron, St. Louis.

Hon. W. A. Pile, St. Louis.

Col. C. 8. Brown, St. Louis.

Hon. J. B. Henderson, St. Louis.
H. V. Myers, St. Louis.

Mr. F. B. Shoemaker, St. Louis.
C. L. Draper, St. Louis.

W. Stenngle, West. Post, St. Louis,
Henry C. Lynch, St. Louis.

A. H. Martin, St. Louis.

Lucian Eaton, St. Louis.

A. H. Hibbard, St. Louis.

George Partridge, St. Louis.

Mrs. T. G. Meier, St. Louis.

Hon. C. H. Branscomb, St. Louis.
S. C. Burch, Missouri Demoerat.
Mrs. McCullough, St. Louis.

Mrs. Brown, St. Louis.

H. A. Stinson, New York.

B. C. Riggs, New York.

8. J. Colgate, New York.

W. H. Brusin, New York.

Mr. Tillford, New York.

Wm. R. Cole, Baltimore.

Col. L. M. Dayton, U.S. A.

Gen. Hoffman, U. S. A.

Gen. Morgan, U. S. A.

Mrs. Gen. Morgan, Fort Leavenworth.
Miss Mills, Fort Leavenworth.
Major Page, U. 8. A.

Col. Irwin, U.S. A.

Capt. C. A. Allegood, U. S. A.

Col. Wilson, U. 8. A.

Major-Gen. Hancock, U. 8. A.
Gen. Haines, U. 8. A.

Gen. Hazen, U. S. A.

Col. Brown, U. 8. A.

Col. McKissock, Gen. Sup. P. R. R.
M. C. Shoemaker, Ohio.

J. W. Miller, Cincinnati Commercial.
Hon. Mr. Newe mb, Missouri.
Hon. Lewis V. Bogy, Washington.
Alfred Hibbard, Tennessee.

Gen, J. L. Donaldson and wife, U. 8. A.
Hon. 8. J. Crawford, Gov. of Kansas.
LETTERS.

I.

Arrival at Clear Creek, the end of the Finished Road — Meeting of the
Excursionists at Clear Creek — Ellsworth — Arrival at Fort Harker —
Curious Rocks — Prairie Grass — Country last passed over — Fort
Harker — Another Meeting — Leave-taking — Expedition to Pond Creek.

Forr Harker, June 7, 1867.

Wz arrived here this morning from Clear Creek, the present end of
the road, four miles east of this place, where we stayed last night,
supped in a big tent, slept in the cars, and where we had a glorious
meeting, over which General Cameron presided, and at which Attorney
General Brewster, of Pennsylvania, was the chief orator. His speech
was one of classic elegance, and rose fully up to the inspiring associa-
tions with which we were surrounded. Mr. Perry, the President of
the Company, was then called and made a few felicitous remarks. He
was followed by Judge Usher, of Indiana, who spoke eloquently and
in perfect accord with the unanimous sentiment of the party, that the
great enterprise, the progress of which we had come to witness, was
deserving of liberal aid from both government and people.

The following is the published report of this meeting:

ELLSwortH, THREE MILES BEYOND \

Proceedings of a Meeting of Excursionists, held near Fort Harker, Kansas, at the
western end of the Track of the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, as
far as completed on this Route.

Crear Creek, Kansas, June 6th, 1867.

Hon. H. A. Risley, Assistant Solicitor United States Treasury, called the
meeting to order and nominated Hon. Simon Cameron, United States Senate, for
President, which was unanimously agreed to.

The following named officers were then elected:

Vice Prestpents :—Hon. A. F. Stevens, N. Hampshire; Hon. J. A. Nicholson,
Delaware ; Hon. A. H. Laflin, New York; Hon. ©. H. Van Wyck, New York;
Hon. B. M. Kitchen, W. Virginia; Hon. 0. D. Hubbard, W. Virginia; Hon. J.
L. Thomas, Maryland; Hon. G. S. Orth, Indiana; Major General Hancock, U.
8. A.; General Haines, U. S. A.; General Hazen, U. S. A.; General Donaldson,
U.S. A.; General G. W. Morgan, Ohio; Hon. J. B. Henderson, Missouri ; Hon.
C. A. Newcomb, Missouri; Hon. W. E. Niblack, Indiana.

_ Secretarigs :—Alexander K. Pedrick, of Pennsylvania; ©. C. Fulton, of

Maryland. :

(11)
12 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Chas. H. Rogers, President of the Tradesmen’s Bank, Philadelphia, moved the
appointment of a Committee to draft resolutions expressive of the views of the
excursionists. The motion was agreed to.

The following Committee was appointed, viz. : . ;

Chas. H. Rogers, Chairman, Pennsylvania; W. W. Taylor, President Union
National Bank, Baltimore; J. B. Lippincott, Pennsylvania; Frederick Schley,
Maryland; Col. J. E. Schley, West Virginia ; Cyrus Yale, New Orleans; Hon.
Frank Jordan, Secretary of State, Pennsylvania.

During the absence of the Committee to prepare resolutions, an address was
delivered by the President, Hon. Simon Cameron. ;

Chas. H. Rogers, Esq., on behalf of the Committee on resolutions, presented
the following preamble and resolutions, viz. : ;

Whereas, An excursion party from the States of New York, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New Hampshire, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ohio, Indiana, Ili-
nois, Missouri, West Virginia, Michigan and Kansas, have this day reached Fort
Harker, Kansas, a point on the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, 1,525
miles west of the Atlantic Ocean, on the direct route to California and the shores
of the Pacific, and now desire to give expression to their views in regard to the
Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, and the courtesies which they have received
in the West; and

Whereas, They realize as their own belief, and that of the American people,
that our mission extends as a nation not only to the promotion of liberty, fra-
ternity and equality, but to the encouragement of great works of art, which shall
be as enduring as our national fame, and which shall bind together by the strong
ties of commercial interest the cities on the shores of two widely separated
Oceans; and

Whereas, Foremost among these works is a Pacific Railway, a project bold and
daring in its inception, and worthy of a people whose enterprise has already
studded the mountains and plains of a continent with the evidences of national
prosperity. Therefore we, the excursionists, assembled ata point almost in the
centre of the American continent, have

Resolved, That, as guests of the Union Pacific Railway Co., Eastern Division,
having travelled over fifteen hundred miles in the same cars, with every possible
comfort, receiving a generous hospitality, and enjoying a constant succession of
agreeable and instructive incidents, we hereby tender our acknowledgments to
the President, Directors, officers and agents of the Company, for the rare oppor-
tunity, the liberal provisions for our comfort, and all the realizations of this
remarkable journey from the seaboard almost to the base of the Rocky Moun-
tains.

Resolved, That we congratulate the President and managers of the Union
Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, upon the rapid and substantial progress of
their work, a miracle of labor, art and capital, and a splendid monument of their
energy and enterprise, and that we congratulate the nation upon the prospect of
an early completion of this magnificent avenue of commerce, which promises so
much for the rapid settlement of an almost boundless domain — for enlarging the
field of labor and production, and which will be at all seasons of such immeas-
urable value and importance to our country in times of war and of peace.

Resolved, That we commend to the fostering care of the Government and the
people of the United States this great undertaking as one that will materially
promote the development of the mineral, agricultural and commercial resources
of the extreme Western States and Territories, and as a great highway between
the oceans, believing that it will add immeasurably to the wealth and prosperity
of the nation, to provide the necessary aid for its early completion.

esolved, That our acknowledgments are also due to the citizens of St. Louis,
Leavenworth, Lawrence, Topeka, Salina, Junction City, Tonganoxie, Hermann,
and the various cities and towns on our way, and to Gen. Hancock, U.S. A.,
commanding the department of Missouri, and his associate officers on the line of
the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, for civilities and courtesies grace-
MEETING OF THE EXCURSIONISTS. 18

fully and generously bestowed, which lent additional charm to our journey and
will be long remembered.

Resolved, That our thanks are tendered to the officers of the Pennsylvania Cen-
tral, Pittsburgh, Columbus & Cincinnati, Columbus & Indianapolis, Terre Haute
& Indianapolis, St. Louis, Terra Haute & Alton, and the Pacific and Missouri
River Railroads, for facilities and courtesies received on the roads respectively
under their supervision, each of them an important link in the lengthened line
we have so happily traversed.

Frederick Schley, Esq., of Maryland, moved the adoption of the resolutions,
and they were unanimously adopted.

Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, sustained
the resolutions in an address, enforcing the claims of the enterprise upon the
Government and citizens of the United States.

John D. Perry, Esq., President of the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division,
acknowledged the compliment to the Company. ‘

Judge Usher, of Indiana, spoke on behalf of the West.

The meeting then adjourned to re-assemble at a convenient opportunity.

SIMON CAMERON, President.
ALEXANDER K. Pepricx,

CmOMiosnos | Secretaries.

After a quiet night’s rest in the sleeping-cars, we were summoned
to an early breakfast, after which we took ambulances for Ellsworth.
This is a bustling and really pleasant place, nearly six months old,
and containing fifty or sixty stores and dwellings. It is located on a
beautiful piece of land on the bank of Smoky Hill, which is here about
the width of the Conemaugh at Blairsville, but deeper. The country
around here is beautiful. The river and its numerous tributaries are
skirted on either side with belts of timber, all the rest being prairie.
Above the bluffs the country is undulating — more so than it is in the
more eastern part of Kansas. The soil is altogether different, being
a strong sandy loam, in some places thin, in others several feet in
thickness. It seems to be quite destitute of lime; while in the portion
of Kansas lying east of Salina (fifty miles west of Fort Riley), the
only stone is limestone. Here, since we struck the “divide,” some
twenty-five or thirty miles back, the only varieties of stone I have
seen are two very dissimilar kinds of sandstone—one a seamless rock
of very pure white sand of fine grain, and so friable that it can be
pulverized between the thumb and finger; the other, which immedi-
ately overlays it, is also fine grained and pure, but very hard and
irregularly laminated.

Having written thus far, we adjourned to Fort Harker.

Yesterday afternoon, a short distance before we reached the present
termination of the road, we visited what is called the ‘Pulpit Rock,”
or, as it is sometimes termed, the ‘Mushroom Rock,” so called because
it resembles a mushroom in having a broad table or cap poised upon a
comparatively slender stem. The pedestal or stem is about ten feet
high and five or six in diameter. This is composed of that soft and
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

easily pulverized sandstone spoken of above, while the eap, which is
oval in form, but nearly round, and on the under side very much
resembling an enormous duck without head or tail, twenty feet long
by perhaps seventeen or eighteen wide and about ten thick, is com.
posed of that hard sandstone of which I have spoken. The upper
side is somewhat rough and fractured. To see that huge block of
stone so nicely balanced upon so narrow and so friable a base is very
curious, and, in spite of reason and experience, the thought that it
might grind it to powder at any moment will suggest itself’ There it
stands on the open and desolate prairie, and there it has stood for
ages. Ata little distance there is a heavy outcropping of the same
kind of rocks, some of the forms of which are very curious.

In some localities that soft sand rock is strongly impregnated with
iron; but it is generally pure, and would make very good glass. Near
Fort Harker, (where I am now writing in a tent placed at my disposal
by Major General Hancock), there is what was at one time a high
column of this sandstone, but it is now crumbled into blocks and loose
sand, presenting, in the distance, the appearance of the ruins of an
ancient marble temple or tower. Some of our party, before we reached
it, insisted that it was a building in ruins; but I knew that that could
not be. |

This side of that “divide” of which I have spoken we have been in
the buffalo-grass region; and here at Fort Harker, and all over these
widely extended regions, it is the predominant grass. It grows in
small tufts, very much like timothy, and is nearly of the same shade
of green, but is finer and more delicate in the blade. In the manner
of its growth and seeding it is more like our blue grass; and although
I have seen some of it that had shot to seed, I have seen none six
inches high. It is very hardy; for although in this encampment it
sustains the trampling of hundreds of men and animals, it seems to be
as healthy and flourishing as that on the open prairie.

I have spoken more particularly of this grass than some readers
might deem worth while; but when we remember that it covers mil-
lions of acres of territory, that it is probably the most nutritious grass
that grows, and that it is capable of feeding to extreme fatness in both
summer and winter millions of cattle and sheep, we will see that it is
not an unimportant topic. Whether it would grow in our State I
cannot say; but, on my return, I intend, if I can, to bring a little of
the seed with me.

The country to the west of Fort Riley for sixty miles, through
which we have passed, is one of extreme beauty and fertility. The
valley of “Solomon’s Fork,” as it is called, which comes in from the
FORT HARKER — ANOTHER MEETING. 15

W.N. W., about forty miles west of Fort Riley, is one of the most
picturesque and fertile regions we have seen; and although the rail-
road only reached it this spring, ] am informed that a thousand set-
tlers are init already. Solomon City——-near where the railroad crosses
the stream—#is a brisk and rather pretty business place. It looks like
a town that is destined to thrive. Salina, another new town, a few
miles further west, is still more thrifty, containing, according to the
best information I could get, nearly two thousand people. We dined
there yesterday. I mingled fora while with the Denver ox-teamsters,
a hardy, robust, and sociable classof men. One little party, who were
cooking their dinner, wanted me to go with them. They said if I
wished to go to Denver, it was the best way I could go. I asked how
long it would take to make the trip? ‘Only a month and a half.”
“Are you not afraid of the Indians?” ITasked. ‘No; you fellows out
Hast think and talk more about the Indians than we do,” was the
answer. I declined the invitation.

The Union Pacific Railway from the Missouri to Fort Harker is a
substantial and good road—better than any we found between Steu-
benville and the Mississippi. Between Salina and this place, where
the road runs across a long southern bend in the river, there is some
heavy cutting and filling.

Fort Harker is about two miles east of Ellsworth, on a beautiful
piece of ground at a moderate elevation above the river. There are
but few valuable buildings, nor is it likely there ever will be more;
for the railroad will render even a military post at this place unneces-
sary. General Hancock declared that every forty miles of this road
finished enabled the Government to dispense with the services of a
regiment of men, at a saving, in this distant region, of more than a
million of dollars a year.

At Fort Harker, this afternoon, we had an enthusiastic adjourned
meeting of the excursionists, at which Senator John B. Henderson,
of Missouri, presided, Gen. Cameron and a small party of friends
having returned last evening. Brief but animated addresses were
made by Hon. John B. Henderson, of Missouri; Major General Han-
cock, U. 8. A.; Hon. G. 8. Orth, M. C. of Indiana; Hon. A. F. Stevens,
of New Hampshire; Hon. J. A. Nicholson, of Delaware; A. H. Laflin,
of New York; Wm. HE. Niblack, of Indiana; Hon. Wm. E. Chandler,
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Washington; Hon. C. D. Hub-
bard, West Virginia; Hon. B. M. Kitchen, West Virginia; Hon. Frank
Jordan, Sec. Com. Pennsylvania; Hon. Jas. S. Thomas, Mayor of St.
Louis; Hon. C. H. Clark, of Kansas; Hon. R. F. Van Horn, of Mis-
souri; Gen, Thos. L. Price, of Missouri; Hon. C. A. Newcomb, of Mis-
16 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

souri; Francis Wells, of the Philadelphia Bulletin; Judge Kingman,
of Kansas; Hon. J. P. Usher, of Indiana; and Hon. C. H. Branscomb,
-of Missouri.

The sentiments uttered by all these gentlemen were in perfect accord
with the resolutions adopted at the first meeting. All seemed to be
deeply impressed with the grandeur and utility of the great enter-
prise which they had come so far to witness, and with not a single
dissent they commended it to the fostering care of the National Leg-
islature. The next adjournment was to a large tent, where an excel-
lent dinner awaited us. Soon after dinner, those of the excursionists
who are going further west took leave of their friends who are re-
turning to their homes, including all the ladies. Some fifteen gentle-
men of the party, with Mr. Perry, the President of this road, set out.
to-morrow for Pond Creek, accompanied by Major General Hancock,
with a small military force, who is going west, in pursuance of his
duties as commander of this department of the service. Pond Creek
is two hundred miles further up the Smoky Hill, and west of Fort
Harker. I return to-morrow to meet the Senatorial party, headed by
Senator Wade, (who have just returned from the Platte, and are
coming up this road,) and accompany them in their excursion over
this road.

 

LETTER I1.— Tornadoes and Rain — Party to Pond Creek — A Ranch
— Solidity of the Harth— Wells — Length of the Smoky Hilt.

Sauina, (Kansas,) June 10, 1867.

I HAVE been here since Saturday afternoon, detained by the washing
out of a small culvert below here. We hope to get off at noon. On
Friday night and Saturday we had a succession of as heavy showers
as I ever saw. All the streams were swollen to the size of little rivers,
and the Smoky Hill is said to be higher than it has been for six or
seven years. The level prairie on which the town stands was literally
one broad shallow sheet of water on Saturday evening.

I parted from my friends, who are going to Pond Creek —two hun-
dred miles east of Ellsworth — on Saturday morning. The party con-
sisted of some twenty gentlemen, among whom were Major General
Hancock, John D. Perry, Esq., President of this road, Mr. Shoemaker,
Chief Contractor, Hon. Messrs. Thomas, of Maryland, Hubbard, of
West Virginia, Mr. H. D. Kennedy, of Pittsburg, several correspond-
ents of Eastern papers, and others; altogether a very pleasant party.
It was at first arranged that I should go, but afterwards that I should
TORNADOES — RAIN —A RANCH. iy

return to Lawrence or Leavenworth to meet the Senatorial party —
some forty in all — consisting of Messrs. Wade, Trumbull, Covode, and
others, who have just returned from their excursion over the Union
Pacific Railway of the Platte. I like the arrangement very well,

On Friday afternoon, after the main body of the excursionists had
left us, we had a tremendous hurricane, the severest, Gen. Hancock
said, that he had ever seen on the plains. One tent was torn up
and prostrated; another was drawn from its fastenings. A frame
building was blown down and scattered over the prairie as if it had
been dry leaves. We dared not remain in the tents, and it was hard
work to bear up against the wind. But there was no danger. The
scene was truly sublime, especially in the northwest, where the dark
clouds, tinged with sunshine, tossed in the tempest in the wildest con-
fusion, causing a strange optical illusion that drew the attention of all
the party —the appearance of a vast lake with well-defined grassy
shore on the near side, and huge and rugged mountains on the farther
shore. The storm lasted about an hour and a half, and then partially
lulled.

Some time in the night, while we were all in our tents, it began
again, and was little, if any, less violent, and continued for about two
hours. This was accompanied by the broadest and most vivid flashes
of sheet-lightning I ever saw, and so incessant that there was hardly
an interval of one second of darkness. This, too, passed over, and I
fell asleep. But long before daylight I was aroused again by the
dashing of rain upon the canvas, as if the windows of heaven had
been opened. After a while I put my hand out upon the ground, and
found that the water had filled the ditch, and was flowing into the
tent. I had no light, but I got up and put my blankets, &c. upon a
table, placed other things upon boxes, then mounted the table and
listened to the fierce hissing and dashing of the rain upon the tent.
At length morning dawned, and when we went out all was quiet and
comparatively pleasant. About noon it poured down again, and then
again, causing the flood of which I have already spoken.

About nine o’clock I took leave of my friends, and left the Fort in
company with R. H.Shoemaker, Esq., Assistant Manager of the road, and
Mr. Wallace, in a spring wagon, to go to the cars at Clear Creek, three
or four miles distant. On the way we came to what is called a ranch.
When I made some inquiries about it, Mr. Wallace kindly proposed to
leave me and return for meinanhour. Introducing me to Mr. Fisher,
one of the contractors, I was invited in and had a very pleasant
time. There were eight ladies, mostly the wives of the contractors,

lively, intelligent and accomplished, and a number of gentlemen. We
9
18 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

had a pleasant and interesting conversation, and partook of a bottle
of Missouri champagne—very good. Mr. Fisher gave me several
specimens of stones and clay; one of the latter I think is valuable,
being more purely white than chalk, and so soft that it had to be
handled carefully to avoid pulverizing it.

As many readers may wish to know what kind of a habitation a
ranch is, I shall attempt a description of this one. Tirst, an excava-
tion is made in the side of a bank or bluff, the back part of which is
left nearly as perpendicular as a wall. A stone wall, one hundred and
twenty feet long and some ten feet high, with a number of glass win-
dows in it, runs along the front of this excavation, leaving a clear
space of sixteen feet by one hundred and twenty. From the top of
the wall to the bank, small rough logs are laid thickly, and upon
these what I took to be a large mass of prairie grass. The whole is
overlaid with a heavy coating of earth, sufficient to keep out the
heaviest rain; for notwithstanding the deluge of the night before,
this ranch was as dry as if not a drop had fallen. It was a rough but
really comfortable habitation, and must be very warm in winter.
The bank here was composed of strong particolored clay, of a light
stone color, streaked with vermilion. I picked up a small specimen.
There are many ranches in that region, some of them rude enough.
I saw a few which were mere burrows.

So solid is the earth out here, that wells are dug twenty-five or
thirty feet deep, and used without walling. J examined one to-day at
the railroad station at this place, which is not yet finished. It is
about fifteen feet in diameter, and is now dug to the depth of twenty-
five feet. It is round, and the sides, which are perfectly perpendicu-
lar, have more the appearance of rough plastered walls than earth.
From top to bottom there seems to be no difference in the soil or earth.
It is a fine grayish sand, similar to the sand or mud bars of the Mis-
souri. The water of the wells here is pure and pleasant to the taste,
and if wells are dug to the proper depth they never fail. The streams
are narrow in their channels, and have high banks, fringed with trees
of various kinds, principally cottonwood. These remarks, with re-
gard to the compactness of the earth, wells, water and streams, apply
~ to all the State of Kansas as far as I have seen it— about 225 miles.

In many sections there are very fine springs. .

The Smoky Hill, which has its sources not far this side of Pike’s
Peak, and has a course of not less than four hundred miles above this
place, is still rising, and has overflowed some extensive flats above.
The rain must have been tremendous up towards the mountains.
CHANGE IN THE SOIL—BUFFALO GRASS DYING ouT. 19

LETTER III.—Continuance of the Flood — Change in the Soil — Buffalo
Grass dying out— Wild Plums and other Fruits.

Satina, Kansas, June 12.

THE river continues to rise, and is beginning to overflow the flats.
It is impossible, while this state of things continues, to run trains
through. I am consequently detained longer than I expected. But 1
need not be idle, for I have already seen enough to occupy me for
some days in writing out my impressions of this most beautiful of all
the regions I have ever seen.

About the meridian of this place the character of Kansas changes—
not so much in conformation and general appearance as in geology
and the composition of the soil. East of this, that is below this, the
only stone is a magnesian limestone. Of this, and of its excellence as
a building stone, I shall speak more fully hereafter. Here the sand-
stone region commences—of the varieties of which I have already
spoken. Below this the soil is almost black, and extremely fertile.
Here, on this extensive river fiat, it is quite dark-colored; but as we
mount upon the higher grounds to the west, it is a rich dark brown—
in some few places rather thin, but generally several feet in thickness.
It is evidently strongly impregnated with iron, and to the eye is
better than any upland soil I ever saw in Pennsylvania. In our State
it would be first-rate wheat land; but whether wheat can ever be
successfully grown on. the plains west of this is a question I cannot
answer. Colonel Fisher, who lives more than thirty miles west of
this, in a place where the brown stone, of which I have before spoken,
abounds, told me that it produced root crops admirably, especially
sweet potatoes. The land of which he spoke is far from the river and
fairly within the buffalo grass region.

Here, near Salina, the buffalo grass begins; but it is evidently
yielding to the coarser and stronger grasses of the prairie. Up about
Fort Harker it predominates. The idea, that as the buffaloes are driven
back the buffalo grass ceases, is one that everywhere prevails in this
country. I think it is well founded. My own opinion is, that this is
the only grass that can bear the heavy trampling of those vast herds.
Hence, small as it is, it keeps possession as long as the buffaloes remain ;,
but when they are driven off, the larger and coarser grasses come in
and smother it. We talk in the East of prairie grass as if it were a
distinct variety; but there are several varieties. In no place did I see
so many and so beautiful flowers as in the neighborhood of Fort
Harker. I saw two varieties of cactus—one the common thick-lobed
cactus which we often see in gardens in our State; the other is very
20 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

curious and pretty, consisting generally of a congeries of globular
masses, each made up of many points, all curiously connected by a
net-work of delicate but strong external fibres and pricks. They are
said to bear pretty flowers, but they are not yet in bloom.

Along the margins of the streams up in that part of the country
there are boundless quantities of wild plums of excellent’ quality.
Colonel Fisher told me that he could load wagons with them. Ladies
use them largely for preserves, jellies, &e. Wild grapes and goose-
berries abound.

So far as I saw, the buffalo grass region, or “the plains,” as this
portion of our continent has long oe called, is a beautiful and
cheerful-looking country — gently undulating, and here and there pre-
senting hills or duttes that partake of the character of ruggedness. In
some places, distant from watercourses, it looks like the ocean, and,
like the sea, it has its wrecks; for look over it when and where you
will, you see the stark remains of its monarchs, the buffaloes, bleaching
in the sun and wind. Waste and desolate as it appears to the weary
traveller in its natural condition, it only awaits the hand of enlight-
ened industry and taste to make it beautiful and home-like—more
beautiful than Illinois, for it is not so monotonous.

Of the meteorology of this country I of course cannot speak with
confidence. It is said by some to be too dry for successful agri-
culture. Perhaps it is; but surely we saw rain enough. Almost con-
stantly there is a fresh and invigorating breeze, often rising into a
stiff gale. This is the clearest atmosphere I ever saw. Men have to
be careful how they estimate distances here by the eye, for objects
miles off look as if they might be reached on foot in a few minutes.
Chills and fevers, I am told, never originate here, and it was a frequent
remark among our excursionists —“ How healthy the people look!”
The sunsets and the nocturnal heavens are far more glorious than
they are with us.

The most serious want of this country is timber, which becomes
more and more scarce as we go west. So far, wood for fuel, here at
Salina, is worth eight dollars per cord; but until more can be grown
it cannot but become more and more scarce and expensive. No coal,
properly so called, has yet been mined in this part of the State; but
it exists in abundance in several localities near the lower end of this
road, in the southern part of the State and in Colorado, east and
south of Pike’s Peak, on the line of this road. In this neighborhood
a vein of lignite exists, some six or seven feet thick. I have a small
sample of it; but of its value as fuel I am not able to speak confi-
dently. The time will come, however, when there will be no difficulty
PRICES OF LUMBER AND OTHER COMMODITIES, 21

about fuel, for trees grow vigorously and rapidly wherever I have
seen them planted; and as railroads are multiplied, as they will be,
and other deposits of coal discovered—of which there are indications
in many places—that difficulty will be overcome.

Lumber for building is procured both here and at Chicago and St.
Louis, and sometimes at Cincinnati, and sells at this place at about
the following prices:

Per m,

Pine—clear stuff, planed, No.1, . . . . $110
cc cc ce “eo «ce 2, . . . $95 @105

« Common “ a . TO@8
Pine flooring, worked, : . : : - $70, 80, 90
Siding, (weatherboarding) . ; . . . 45@60
Shingles, pine—perm. . . + 10@11
“ Dimension stuff,” (scantling,) ing, . 5s . 70
Cottonwood boards, we : ce 45 @ 50
Cottonwood shingles, .  . : : ; . 450@6

From these figures the cost of building up here can be proximately
estimated. Rents are high. The “Goddard House,” a tolerably large,
but flimsy and roughly finished building, almost entirely built of cot-
tonwood, rents for $1500 a year. A smaller but somewhat better
finished house, where I am staying, brings, I am told, $1800 a year.
Flour is selling at $22 a barrel, and potatoes $2.75. The soil yields
enormously as a general thing, and farming is a remunerative busi-
ness. Cattle, I am informed, only require of from four to six weeks
feeding in the winter, and hay, cut ad libitum on the prairies, is the
cheapest thing in this country.

I have thus endeavored to give you a fair report, leaving the reader
to ponder the pros and cons.

The report now is that the river began to fall this morning. We
expect to get off this afternoon.

 

LETTER IV.—The Flood—The Question of Routes.

Satna, Kansas, June 12, 1867.— Afternoon.
THe “Smoky” still continues to swell, contrary to the report this
morning that it was falling. It has overspread the flats for miles in
places. This town now stands ona large island. No trains can get
out to-day, so I must be content to abide one day more. The report
now is that the Senatorial party will be at Junction City this evening,
and will probably be here for dinner to-morrow. Ifa train should go
22 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

out in the morning I shall meet the party at Abeliene, halfway
between this and Junction City, and return with them.

The Smoky Hill, in flood, has all the characteristics of a great
river—rising day after day after the rain has ceased and the ground
become dry —and certainly this morning it has the appearance of a
great river. Its heavy volume of water, of the same color as the Mis-
souri, rolls onward, in a smooth but by no means slow current. So
far as heard, the railroad has sustained no serious damage. This
flood is the greatest that has occurred on this river for nine years.
The Solomon, which comes in about twelve miles below, is higher
than it was ever known to be.

THE QUESTION OF ROUTES.

At this place the Santa Fe trade at present concentrates. Wagons

drawn by oxen, and manned by Mexicans, are almost continually to
be found at the railroad station. These Mexicans are singular-look-
ing beings, as swarthy as Indians, and many of them have the Indian
features more or less strongly marked. Dull, good-natured, but pro-
foundly ignorant, they move about their work like machines. They
are quite cheerful, and the soft and musical tones of their language or
patois are in strong contrast with the strong and harsh utterances of
their Anglo-Saxon brethren of the Denver trade.
*: I meet out here many intelligent men who are more or less familiar
with New Mexico. Although broken up by mountains, it has many very
fine valleys, fertile and beautiful, and they all unite in representing it
as immensely rich in minerals, especially gold and silver. But they
say that it is impossible that either the agricultural, the pastoral, or
the mineral wealth of that territory can ever be developed until it is
united with the rest of the country by rail. To work its mines
requires ponderous machinery, which it is simply impossible to trans-
port by the existing means of conveyance; and even agriculture must
be carried on in the most primitive modes until a railway shall bring
the improved implements of the day into that isolated and benighted
region.

But even more important than all these is the opening of the
avenue through which shall flow into that degraded and dark-
minded population the lights of true Christian civilization. Both
priests and people have fallen so low that nothing but influences from
without can be instrumental in raising them up. They are now our
fellow-citizens, as well as our fellow-men, and as such they have claims
upon us which we may not lightly ignore.

With the lights we now have no one can pretend to estimate how
THE QUESTION OF ROUTES. 23

important a member of this Union New Mexico may yet become, or to
calculate the vastness of its various resources. Neither can the value
of its trade be calculated—the enormous amount of machinery, of
agricultural implements, and in short, everything that a civilized
people need.

There is a strong desire on the part of the people on this side of the
Mississippi that the Union Pacific Railway Company shall at once
extend their route into New Mexico, whether they go to Denver and
thence via Salt Lake City to California or not. They contend that
the route through New Mexico and Arizona will do infinitely more
to develop the resources of our great interior, as well as be a better
route to California, than the more direct but more mountainous line
by way of Salt Lake, and across the Sierra Nevada, far north of San
Francisco—that both the high mountain grades and the tremendous
snows of the other route will be avoided. They argue that, although
the road to San Francisco may be lengthened some hundreds of miles,
this will be more than compensated by the diminution of grade, the
avoidance of the snow, and by the fact that the road will touch the tide-
water of the Pacific at at least two important points before San Francisco is
reached —the head of the Gulf of California and San Diego, a good port
on the coast of Southern California, more than four hundred miles
south of San Francisco. And when to these considerations the supe-
rior value of the intermediate country is added, it is insisted that
there ought to be no hesitation. Will the reader please refer to a
map and trace the routes here indicated, and judge for himself of the
soundness of these arguments?

One thing is very certain: Hither the Government, aided by a com-
pany such as this, of able and energetic capitalists, must push a rail-
way through these vast regions, from the Missouri to the Pacific, or
they must lie undeveloped and unimproved from generation to gen-
eration. Individual energy and enterprise can never accomplish the
work. The locomotive must precede the plow, and the town the
farm. No farmer, however bold, but would recoil from the task of
going forward, as the farmers of the States east of the Mississippi
did, in advance of these mighty fordes of civilized life. The old pro-
cesses must be reversed, as indeed they have been. I wish that all
the people who may read these words could see, as I have seen, the
strong and healthy stream of civilization following the line of this
road up through this most beautiful of valleys, and see and enjoy, as I
have seen and enjoyed, as high a civilization, as many of the elegant
creature comforts of life, and as pleasant and intelligent people, as are ~
to be found anywhere. The right plan of human progress has been
hit upon at last.
24 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

There is not a work now in progress which so strongly commends
itself to the support of the American Congress and people as this
which so many of us went out to see. Without a shadow of dissent,
and with all the earnestness and eloquence of which the distinguished
excursionists were capable, they commended it to the country and its
legislative representatives.

: ® .

LETTER V.— Prairie Dogs— Rambling Observations— Enterprise of
Chicago — Connection of Chicago with this State and Road.

Sarina, Kansas, June 13, 1867.
PRAIRIE DOGS.

Everysopy has heard of the curious little animals known by this
name; but the term is altogether inapplicable, for the creature has
not a single feature or characteristic of the canine race about it, ex-
cept that it barks. Its bark, however, is that of the squirrel, not that
of the dog. It, like the squirrel and marmot, belongs to the genus
rodentia, and lives altogether upon vegetable food. Its color 1s a yel-
lowish brown; its form and head resemble those of the gray squirrel ;
in size it is somewhat larger. Its ears look as if cropped off; its
tail is short, and its paws are like those of the squirrel, but admirably
adapted to burrowing in the ground. The expression of its counte-
nance, if I may so talk, is that of the squirrel, and its manifestations
of confidence, bordering on affection, when petted, are exactly like
those of the squirrel. In eating, it grasps its food between its paws
and nibbles it daintily, just as the squirrel does; and if corn is given,
of which it is fond, it bites out the soft gortiinating Pe and throws
the flinty part away.

As our party came up the road, about halfway between Fort Riley
and this place, while running over a broad prairie, we came to a place
called Abeliene, a hamlet of three or four houses and a country store.
The place is perhaps better known as Dogtown. Here the train
stopped, and our attention was directed to about a hundred little
mounds, in the top of each of which was a neat little hole running
down, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, deep into the ground.
On the top of each mound was one prairie-dog standing up on his
haunches, as erect as a grenadier, apparently on the lookout to see
what was coming. We all got out and approached the cluster of
. mounds, which were all comprehended within a space of less than half
an acre. On our approach, all the “dogs” at once dived down into
their burrows with the speed of arrows, and disappeared. Presently
RAMBLING OBSERVATIONS.» 25

one fellow, bolder than his comrades, came up to the mouth of his
subterranean domicil and began to bark angrily at us, much as a very
small dog would do, which afforded a good deal of amusement.
Presently another appeared, who received his visitors with all the
politeness of which he was capable, and was rewarded for his confi-
dence with sundry bits of crackers, cakes and candy, with which he
appeared to be well pleased. In their eagerness to see it, many of
the party, especially the ladies, pressed closer and closer around.
This soon became too much for his courage, and he darted back into
his burrow. Hereupon Mr. Wells, of the Philadelphia Bulletin, took
it upon him to be master of ceremonies, made a mock-heroic speech,
assuring “the audience” that it was essential, in a performance of
this kind, that the circle be fifty feet in diameter, and that he would
continue to “swing around the circle” until it had expanded to that
amount. ‘This he did, talking as he went, and the thing was soon
accomplished. Then our little friend ventured out again, and ex-
hibited his courage and agility by dashing off from his place of refuge &
yard or two to pick up bits of cake. It was a pretty and unique
Spectacle to see a circle of perhaps a hundred and fifty ladies and gen-
tlemen standing in a ring, gazing well pleased at the gambols of the
funny little animal. We stayed here about half an hour, and all the
time our angry one kept barking at us.

These “ dogs” were about half domesticated, and were fed by the
families who live beside them, and it is probable that the young are
sold for pets. A member of our party asked one of the ladies resident
where they came from. “Oh,” said she, “they were brought from the
West.” In another place we saw a similar village or colony, appar-
ently more numerous, in a perfectly wild state. They are exceed-
ingly gregarious, and, it is said, harmless. There is a notion widely
prevalent out here, that in every dog-hole are to be found a rattle.
snake and an owl; but no one has ever been found who ever saw
the last two inhabitants in the burrow. The probability is that
the reptile and the bird are apt to be about in search of the young
“dogs” as prey. Whether their habitations communicate one with
another under ground, I could not find any one able to tell; but proba+
bly they do. I was told by a young man that he poured one hundred
and thirty buckets of water into a hole before he forced a “dog” to
come up. It then came and he caught it.

RAMBLING OBSERVATIONS.

There are birds here, but they are not very numerous. I have seen
some of beautiful plumage. When the country is settled, and trees
26 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

become more numerous, they will multiply. There is a small species |
of blackbird here, which is very useful in destroying insects, especially
grasshoppers, which are occasionally a great pest. This year there
are few, if any, up here, but down near the Missouri they are pretty
numerous. They have, however, not done any serious harm.

Rattlesnakes are somewhat numerous on ‘the plains” west of this;
but I have not seen any. I have been about as far west as the cele-
brated spot where our excursion friends of last fall killed the buffalo ;
but as the wave of civilized life, led on by the Union Pacific Railway,
has rolled on about eighty miles since then, I did not expect to see
any. I, however, helped to eat a fresh one at Clear Creek, a little this
side of Fort Harker. The Indians and the buffaloes are rapidly melt-
ing away before the resistless march of a stronger race. Before this
mighty onward movement all that cannot be assimilated must be
destroyed. The buffalo cannot be domesticated, nor the Indian civil-
ized, so they are apparently alike devoted to extermination. Both
are surrounded; the cordon of civilization is pressing closer and closer
around them, and the issue, so far as we can see, is as inevitable as
fate. In another letter I shall speak more fully on this painful sub-
ject; only remarking now, that, from all I hear, it will be more toler-
able in the day of judgment for the Indian, with all his savagery,
than for some white men whom our country has clothed with authority,
and into whose hands it has placed the destiny of these apparently
doomed wretches.

No part of the earth’s surface has ever passed so suddenly from the
condition of a vast, trackless, desolate abode of wild beasts and roving
savages to one of complete and beautiful Christian civilization as this ;
and probably no other could have been so quickly transformed. As
it was in the primitive earth, God’s own hand has planted a garden
here, and all that is required of man is that he shall go in and occupy,
and dress it, and keep it. Here he is not called upon to wage a life-
long battle with heavy forests and perplexing brambles, for the land
is already a rich meadow, decked with flowers and ready for the
plough and the seed; while the railway, sent here by the agency of
well-directed, yea, Heaven-directed enterprise, with its concomitants,
fills out all the material conditions required. Now let the Bible, with
its blessed influences, and living teachers of both schools and churches,
together with the press, be sent forward, and the old exploded myth
of an “ American desert ” will vanish even from the memory of men ;
for under the operation of the forces now in action, this long talked of
“desert” will soon blossom asthe rose. Indeed, it is literally a flowery
desert now.
CONNECTIONS OF CHICAGO WITH KANSAS. 27

THE ENTERPRISE OF CHICAGO.

It is a notable fact that all the active business men here hail from
Chicago, or somewhere on that social and commercial line. Many of
the stores are branches of commercial houses in that city. The for-
warding and commission merchants, who handle the Denver and
Santa Fe trades, are Chicago men; and the wagons, reapers, mowers,
threshers, shovels, spades, hoes, cooking-stoves, and everything per-
taining to a farmer’s outfit — and there are more of these things here
than I ever saw in any town of its size— bear the same impress, and
are furnished by Chicago, or by New York or New England, through
Chicago. This I like to see, for it proves what I asserted strongly in
my correspondence last fall, that the Union Pacific Railway of the
Kansas is the better avenue for the trade between the farthest Hast
and the farthest West. It proves, moreover, that already Chicago,
which has not yet a perfect connection by rail with this road, is in-
trenching itself strongly and firmly in this matchless garden of the
continent. It is through this avenue, and this only, that that city and
the great commercial cities of which it is the outpost, can reach the
centre of Colorado, and the still more remote territories of New Mexico
and Arizona, and I am persuaded that it is destined to be their best
route to California. .

At present that trade is carried over the Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy Railroad (the best road in Illinois) to Quincy; thence across
the Mississippi to the Hannibal and St. Joseph road, which begins on
the opposite bank of the river, and runs to St. Joseph, on the Missouri.
Thence it goes by rail to Weston, six miles above Leavenworth.
From Weston to Leavenworth it is carried by steamers. At Leaven-
worth it meets one of the termini of the Union Pacific Road. In a
short time a branch road will be completed from Cameron (about fifty
miles east of St. Joseph) to the east branch of the Missouri, opposite
Leavenworth; and a bridge across the river to that city is the last
remaining link required to complete the long and direct chain between
Chicago and the Union Pacific Railway of the Kansas. A branch
road from Cameron to Kansas City is also in progress of construction,
and another bridge is to be built across the Missouri at that point,
which is the main terminus of the Union Pacific. Thus two distinct
lines will unite the cities of the lakes, and through them all the rail-
road lines in and north of Pennsylvania, with this great continental
thoroughfare. They are now building a bridge over the Mississippi
at Quincy. So, when all that is now in rapid progress shall be com-
pleted, cars may be run from any of the cities of the Atlantic coast to
28 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

the Pacific without breaking bulk. Before five years more shall have
rolled round, that which lately seemed but an enthusiast’s dream will
be sober verity, an accomplished fact

I have said that I was pleased to see the energy of Chicago in
grasping this prize. It is eminently commendable; and if the cities
along the other great line of the country’s commerce — beginning at
Philadelphia and ending at St. Louis—allow themselves to be out-
stripped, it is their own fault. This, however, 1 do not like to see.
Allow me to state frankly the result of my observation during the
past few days of constrained sojourn in this lively little border town,
which is for the present the commercial terminus of this road. I have
rambled through the closely packed warehouses of the railroad and
of the forwarding-houses, and one empty glass box, bearing the
stencil-mark of a Pittsburgh house, was the only evidence I met that
there was anything manufactured in our State. Ohio was represented
by some agricultural machinery. Even St. Louis had very little to
remind one that it is a great city, and that to its enterprise the coun-
try is mainly indebted for this magnificent thoroughfare into a vast
and prolific region, which, but for it, would afford no market to any-
body.

The magnitude of the trade on this road astonishes even those who
are building it. Its revenue during the month of May was over
$172,000, or at the rate of over $2,000,000 a year. A double track will
be needed through the valley of the Kansas long before the far distant
goal can be reached.

P. S.— In justice to our own State, I must not omit to mention the
fact that all the rails on this road, together with the locomotives and
cars, are of Pennsylvania manufacture. I only spoke above of the
commodities which enter into the general trade of the road.

 

LETTER VI.— Water falling —_ A new Hotel — Return of three of the
Pond Creek Party — Observations upon the Country above.

Santina, Kansas, June 14, 1867.

I am still here; but as it is a very good place to see and hear what
is going on, to witness the vigorous workings of border life, I cannot
say that I regret my involuntary detention. I am comfortably fixed
at a respectable restaurant. We have a good table, clean and tidy
chambers, and pleasant and intelligent company. I tried the Goddard
House about thirty-six hours, but that was enough. In a few weeks
THE POND CREEK PARTY. 3 29

a new hotel, on strictly temperance principles, will be opened near the
railroad station at this place, by Mrs. ANNE BickERDYKE and Mrs.
Grerne. I made the acquaintance of both these ladies at the house
of Col. Phillips. Mrs. Bickerdyke’s name occupies a high place as an
active and laborious Christian, and also among the “ Women of the
War.” Her labors among the soldiers, in camp and hospital, were
long-continued and very efficient. I have read her biography, and
found it extremely interesting. Mrs. Greene is also an excellent lady,
Their house will be an acquisition to this town.

‘The “Smoky” continued to rise until Thursday morning, when it
began slowly to recede. Between this and Junction City some two or
three culverts and a little tressel-work were damaged, and as the river
has been up so long, it was impossible to make any repairs, and hence
the long delay. But for the water, a few hours would have sufficed to
have put the road in running order. I think the Company will now
raise the road-bed in a few places between Junction City and this
town. Above this it is all right, and below Junction City the trains
have run regularly. The flood in the Solomon and Saline was, I am
told, unprecedented. The Smoky Hill has not been so high since 1858.

To show how fast they do things here, may mention that the
Methodist Society have reared a neat little meeting-house from the
foundation since I have been here, that is, this week, and expect to
hold a quarterly meeting in it on Sunday next.

The weather is quite warm. Day before yesterday the thermometer
rose to 80 degrees. Yesterday it could not have been less than 90
degrees, and to-day it is equally high; but the fine, fresh, invigorating
breeze prevents it from being oppressive.

Yesterday two of our friends of the excursion, Hon. J. L. Thomas,
M. C. of Maryland, and BE. D. Kennedy, Esq., of Pittsburgh, came
down here— having left the party going to Pond Creek —and are now
water-bound like myself. They went as far as Big Creek, fifty miles
beyond Ellsworth. They represent it as a still better country than
that around Fort Harker and Ellsworth. The first day or two the
party were drenched with rain, but had very fine weather afterwards.
They had killed four buffaloes, one of which, a big bull, stood quite a
siege from the whole line before he succumbed. They left the rest of
the party, led and commanded by General Hancock, well and in good
spirits. We shall return down the Kansas together.

This morning [ had an interesting conversation with a man of con-
siderable intelligence and an accurate observer, who has spent some
time in the neighborhood of Big Creek, where the railroad line crosses
that stream and follows its valley for about twenty-five miles. This
30 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

is nearly one hundred miles west of this place, and about one hundred
and fifty miles west of Fort Riley. He represents it as a fine country.
The streams are well fringed with ash, elm and black walnut. There
is but little cottonwood. The ash are large and straight. One man
is making preparations to put in a crop of fall wheat, and has expecta-
tion of a good yield. The soil being deep, no apprehension is felt of a
lack of moisture. My own impression is, after a careful examination
of the deep brown soil of those “ plains,’ fairly within the buffalo
grass region, that with deep ploughing it is admirably adapted to the
cultivation of winter wheat. Spring wheat, I think, would not suc-
ceed. The prairie is hard to break up. The ground is remarkably
solid, and is scarcely affected at all by frost; and what renders the
first ploughing more difficult is a plant which grows abundantly, called
the “ Devil’s shoe-string,” the long, lateral roots of which are so tough
that they can neither be cut nor broken with the plough. The only
way is to run under the tuft and heave it allover. After that it causes
no further trouble.

Since I saw that gentleman I have conversed with Mr. EH. Honek,
who has resided over a year on Spring Creek, a small stream nine
miles west of Salina, on the “divide,” between this and Fort Harker,
and on this brown soil of which I have spoken. He, too, is making
preparations to put in a crop of winter wheat, and is confident of suc-
cess. He has been in this country for twelve years, and appears to be
a man of good sense and close observation. He has not yet tried
fruit-growing ; but he told me of a peach orchard which he had seen
some miles southeast of this, on an elevated part of the plains, which
was very healthy and flourishing. Here, and in every part of Kansas
east of this, all the fruit-trees I have seen are very luxuriant. At the
Pottawatomie Mission, below Fort Riley, I saw as beautiful peach-trees
as ever I saw anywhere, heavily laden with young fruit.

I have no wish to induce men to buy up these buffalo-grass regions
for farming purposes until all their characteristics and conditions shall
be more fully known. But from all I have seen and heard, I am per-
suaded that this remote portion of our national domain, comprehend-
ing hundreds of thousands of square miles, which we have heretofore
heard of only as “the plains,’ and as “the buffalo region,” will be
found to be valuable land, well adapted to be the habitation of civil-
ized people, and far more salubrious than any territory we have yet
occupied. I believe that population will rapidly follow this railroad
and its branches, and that Government lands, hitherto utterly value-
less, will be eagerly occupied as homesteads, or bought up. I say
population will follow this railroad. It cannot precede it ; for even the
ARRIVAL AT LAWRENCE. 31

dwelling of the settler must be carried forward. The log-cabin can
never be an institution here, and the ranch is no place for women
and children. Let the Government, then, by generous subsidies, push
on this great work, and every dollar expended will be returned four-
fold in national wealth and national revenue within the present gen-
eration. Even were there no San Francisco, no California, no Pacific
Ocean to reach at the other end, the building of this road would be a
wise and beneficent measure, and an enduring crown of glory to the
men who shall accomplish it, whether in their capacity of statesmen
or of capitalists, and to the generation in which it shall be consum-
mated.

LETTER VII.—<Arrival at Lawrence— Flood in the Smoky Hill and
Kansas.

LAWRENCE, Kansas, June 20, 1867.
I ARRIVED at this beautiful and historic little city yesterday after-
noon, as I am slowly heading eastward. Of this place I shall speak at
another time.

FLOOD IN THE SMOKY HILL AND KANSAS.

On the afternoon of Friday, the 7th, just after the main body of our
party, including all the ladies, had left some twenty of us at Fort
Harker, over 220 miles west of the Missouri, we had a very violent
hurricane. About midnight we had another. General Hancock told
me that in twenty-five years’ experience on the plains he had never
witnessed so heavy a gale as that of the afternoon. But of this bois-
terous night I think I have already spoken.

Tleft Fort Harker about eight o’clock on Saturday morning, and
reached Salina in the afternoon in the contractor’s car attached to a
construction train—very pleasant, but slow. I dined in the car with
R. H. Shoemaker, Esq., and other gentlemen, to whom I am indebted
for many courtesies. But the heavy rain of Friday night, and the
almost unparalleled torrents of Saturday, flooded the country and
turned every channel of surface water into an improvised river. I
never saw such rain as that.

I could go no further than Salina that evening. A train attempted
to go down on Sunday morning, but was partially wrecked at a broken
culvert a few miles below town, and the few passengers had to get
back the best way they could. I did not attempt it, hoping that the
regular train would be able to go out on Monday morning. But in
this I was disappointed. It was not the swellings of the Smoky Hill
that prevented the train from running on Monday, but the unexampled
32 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

rise of the lateral streams below Salina—the Saline, the Solomon and
others. Afterwards the overflowings of the “Smoky” prevented the
damage done by the smaller streams from being repaired. No bridges
were carried away. That over the Saline was saved by running a
train, laden with one hundred and fifty tons of railroad iron, upon it.

On Sunday the Smoky Hill began to swell rapidly, and continued to
rise steadily until Thursday, although on Sunday the weather had
changed, and become as dry and fine as I ever saw it. For several
days the flats in many places were covered from bluff to bluff. The
town of Salina was not overfiowed, but it stood on a large island.
Now for the results.

I have said that no bridges were carried away. The culverts were
but slightly damaged. Above Salina the track of the road was over-
flowed’ but a short distance, for it soon rises to higher ground. Be-
tween Salina and Junction City, a distance of fifty miles, over which
we passed on Saturday last, (having been shut in at Salina from the
Saturday previous,) some six or eight miles of ‘the track was or had
been submerged. In two places we ran through shallow lakes each
about a mile across, and in length the entire width of the valley from
bluff to bluff—perhaps two or three miles. It was romantic, although
by no means safe, travelling. A construction train preceded us, care-
fully examining and repairing as it went. I never saw men work so
hard, so faithfully and so cheerfully as did these. The main trouble
was that the waves, raised by the wind on these broad expanses of
overflowed water, washed the embankments and undermined the road-
bed; and in many places the track had to be propped up, although
yet submerged, with ties and blocks. Finally, when within four or
five miles of Junction City, the front passenger-car—the one I was
in—ran off the track; but as we were going very slowly there was no
harm done and no shock. The water was then about a foot over the
track. We all managed to crowd into the baggage-car, and the ma-
jority contrived to get something to sit upon.

While in the baggage-car, and all being pleased, grateful and in the
best possible humor, the Hon. John L. Thomas, of Baltimore, one of
our excursionists, proposed that the hearty thanks of the passengers
be tendered to EH. C. Smead, Hsq., the Resident Engineer of the road,
and to the men under his command, for the courage, skill and indom-
itable perseverance with which they had grappled with and overcome
the difficulties that beset our way. And in language less demonstra-
tive, but not less sincere, many uttered their acknowledgments to Him
who keeps us in all our ways. About nine o’clock we arrived safely
at Junction City.
FLOOD IN THE SMOKY HILL AND KANSAS. 33

Below Junction City —at which place the Republican, uniting with
the Smoky Hill, together form the Kansas, or the Kaw, as it is more
frequently called here, and below which the channel is much wider —
the flood did no harm to the road. In the fifty miles between June-
tion City and Salina, about eight miles of the road-bed will have to be
more or less elevated. Some say the flood of 1858 was equal to this;
others say it was not.

The Senatorial party reached Junction City on Thursday ; but the
same cause which kept me from getting down prevented them from
getting up; so, of course, I did not succeed in joining them. They
returned on Friday, greatly pleased with the country, the railway
and the people. Messrs. Wade, Covode and others spoke at Lawrence,
Manhattan and Junction City. The free air of Kansas would be
wholesome to such lungs as theirs, But as I have not thought it
necessary to be careful to gather up the incidents of their trip, such
things not being the subject of my letters, I shall not attempt to tell
what they did or said. The only disappointment I have felt since I
left was my inability to join them at Leavenworth as intended.

This flood will be advantageous to this railroad, as it will afford
known high-water marks to guide the engineers in their future opera-
tions, which they have not heretofore had. The alterations needed
in the portion of the road already laid, can be made ata compara-
tively trifling cost. Although it was not so pleasant to myself to be
water-bound at Salina, as it would have been to have joined the
Senatorial party, I cannot say that I regret it, for it gave me an op-
portunity of seeing for myself how the road stood this trying ordeal.
Moregwer, it held me for a week at that stirring town, at what is yet
the extreme border of settlement —a far better point of observation
of the great onward march than any of the lower towns would have
been.

While at Salina I was joined by three of my friends of the excur-
sion, who had started from Fort Harker with the party to Pond Creek,
two hundred miles further up the Smoky Hill. Hon. J. M. Thomas,
of Baltimore, H. D. Kennedy, Esq., of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Renwick,
of Detroit. They went as far as Big Creek, about sixty miles; but
as the progress of the party was impeded by the swollen streams, they
felt constrained to return by stage. They bore a part in the chase
and slaughter of four buffaloes, their narration of which exploits were
rich indeed. Big Creek had been enormously swollen, and so sudden
was the rise that five soldiers and two citizens were surrounded by
the waters and drowned at Fort Hays.’ Gen. Hancock, on his arrival,
ordered the location to be changed to higher ground.

38
34 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

I have thought it worth while to be thus particular in speaking of
this extraordinary flood, because of its bearing upon the Union Pacifie
Railway, and to correct any exaggerated reports which, perchance,
may be set afloat.

P. S.— Already five construction trains are at work on those parts
of the road found to be too low, and in a few days all will be better.
than ever, and the regular trade resumed.

 

LETTER VIII.— Trees in Kansas.
Lawrences, June 21, 1867.
TREES IN KANSAS.

In the greater part of this State, except along the margins of the
watercourses, there is very little timber; but along the streams it
grows with great luxuriance. The main part is cottonwood, a variety
of poplar, and perhaps one of the poorest varieties. The tree often
grows to a large size, and is much used for the manufacture of rough
lumber, such as joists, rafters, scantling, fencing-boards, and often it
is used for partitions, and even siding and floors in the rougher and
cheaper kinds of houses. It is almost impossible to plane it. In fact,
nothing but the axe and saw can work it up. The trunks of the trees
are generally cut into saw-logs, and the branches into cord-wood. It
is rarely split, for the woody fibre is interlaced almost as much as
gum, and is nearly as tough as the fibre of hemp. It is not often that
a piece long enough for a common saw-log can be obtained without
more or less crooks in it. There are many saw-mills, all of which use
the circular saw exclusively. Sometimes two saws are used, so that
when large logs are operated upon, the upper one cuts what the lower
one cannot reach. Cottonwood is wholly unfit for posts, railroad ties,
or any use which brings it in contact with the soil, ag it quickly rots
in such situations; but if kept dry, it is for many purposes a strong,
useful wood. Cottonwood boards make pretty good fences, but their
tendency to warp often causes them to break the nails.

The cottonwood is of very rapid growth. It is often planted for
purposes of shade and ornament. The denseness and deep shining
green of its foliage make it one of the most beautiful trees, when
standing out in open places, I ever saw. Harly in June it ripens its
seed, which.are quite small, and each seed is winged with a small tuft
of downy fibre like cotton, which bears it for miles on the wind.
Hence the name of cottonwood.
~ Next to the cottonwood, the black walnut is the important timber
TREES IN KANSAS. 30

of this country, and is probably next to it in abundance. It is used
for everything from furniture to fence-rails. It grows large and quite
as straight as in the Eastern States. It is found most plentiful in the
neighborhood of the larger streams.

The oak, in its several varieties, is found here; but although I
have seen a few fine specimens, it has not done well as a natural
production. But the trouble has been that in the only places
where it could flourish—the high open ground—no trees could get
in for the prairie fires. As a cultivated tree, the oak will do well
here.

I have seen some hickory down near the Missouri, and some ash.
Away out on the plains, far beyond Fort Harker, the ash grows large
and straight, and is a valuable tree. There are no chestnuts.

Wild fruit-trees are very abundant, especially plums, haws, paw-
paws, gooseberries, and wild grapes. Beyond Salina, far out in the
buffalo grass region, the plums are said to be very fine. I saw some
of these native plums in the garden of Judge Smith, of this city,
which were very beautiful both as trees and fruit. The plums hang
in clusters like large, open bunches of grapes. He said they are very
good when ripe.

I have never seen apple-trees and peach-trees flourish as they do
here, and this year the fruit crop is abundant in proportion to the
number of trees. There are not as many fruit-trees as there ought to
be. Iam told that in the early settlement of the State it was given
out as a settled fact that fruit would not succeed in Kansas. Proba-
bly the thing was said more to justify improvidence and neglect
than anything else; but it seems that the croakers had it their own
way for a time, and the introduction of fine fruit was retarded. Now,
however, the tide appears to have turned the other way, as numerous
flourishing young orchards attest.

Grapes do admirably here. I meta Mr. Burns at Manhattan, twenty
miles east of Fort Riley, who is well known in Pittsburgh. He has
located himself a few miles distant from that beautiful town, and
devoted his time, his labor and talent exclusively to the culture of the
vine. He has many varieties, all of which do well. As he is a lite-
rary man, his publications on that subject are valuable, and his labors
will doubtless result ere long in clothing many of these beautiful
slopes in vineyards. I measured a grape-leaf in Judge Smith's
garden. It was twelve and a half inches wide, and twelve from
head to point.

The locust grows here with great vigor, but the borer is severe
upon them. I think crude petroleum, applied to the bole and larger
36 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

branches, would cure this evil. If that pest could be overcome, mil.
lions of these valuable trees might be reared at a trifling expense of
land and labor. Indeed, the land would be better for their presence.
Growing as they do here, they are very beautiful.

But of all the cultivated trees I have seen in this State, the soft
maple is the most luxuriant and the most beautiful. They are planted
by thousands in both town and country.

Osage orange hedges abound, and are in the highest degree success-
ful. Judge Bailey, of the Supreme Court, who is himself a farmer, told
me yesterday that they can be made at an expense of less than fifty
cents a perch. In about four years they are sufficiently grown to be a
protection against animals. In the meantime, a fence of some other
kind is required, Animals do not, or, rather, cannot eat the orange.
Its strong, sharp thorns protect it.

I have never seen in Kansas a tree that had been uprooted by the
wind. I mentioned this to one of the oldest citizens, and he said that,
although he had never thought of it before, he was unable to call to
mind a single instance in which he had seen a tree that had been blown
“out of root.” The reason of this is quite obvious. The soil is so deep
that trees of all kinds strike their roots so far down that it is impos-
sible for any amount of force that the tree could bear to heave up the
huge mass of soil which they embrace. But neither have I in a single
instance seen a tree which had been broken by the wind. This may be
accounted for from the fact that the trees of this country having to
withstand a strong breeze almost every day, grow more sturdy than
they do with us; and hence even a gale or a hurricane cannot break
them. Young fruit-trees require to be securely staked till they are
well rooted. After that they appear to stand up as well, and are as
symmetrical, as I ever saw trees anywhere. Peach-trees form their
heads more beautifully in Kansas than in any part of the eastern
States that I have visited, and this year the crop is very abundant.
Most of the early settlers were negligent in this matter, so that at
this time the market is not one quarter supplied, and men could do
well to go largely into the business yet.

Mr. Burns, who probably knows more about the matter than any
other now in Kansas, assured me confidently that in no part of the
United States except Southern California did the vine grow so well
and bear its fruit so abundantly and surely as in Kansas. And he

gave a reason for it. The abundant rains of April, May, and part of
June give them a fine start ; then the warm, dry, and pure atmosphere
of the subsequent months secures the ripening of the grapes both
richly and soundly. When the rich flats of the valley of the Kansas
TREES IN KANSAS. 37

shall be a succession of farms, the fields enclosed with stone walls or
hedges as the proprietors please, and its bluffs of every imaginable
form of grace and beauty shall be clad in vines, as they will be, it will
probably be the most enchanting valley on this planet.

For more than two hundred miles the Union Pacific Railway passes
through the midst of this paradisiacal scene, which hardly for a moment
is hid from view in all its amplitude and grandeur, Why, it will be
worth a journey from Pennsylvania just to see it.

The cedar grows well here. In the valleys beyond Fort Harker it
is indigenous and in placesabundant. The black walnut abounds from
the mouth of the Kansas as far as I can hear anything about. Every
farmer knows what kind of soil that indicates.

From my own observation, and from conversations with others, I
am satisfied that the only thing that prevented these vast prairies
from being wooded are the annual fires that sweep through the dry
grass. Where they have been stopped even for a year or two, young
trees spring up spontaneously. This I have seen in many places; and
hence I believe that in twenty years there will be far more wood here
than there is now. But it is not as scarce now as many people sup-
pose. The other day I went to visit a woollen factory in this city —
of which I shall have something to say in another place. The pro-.
prietor with whom I rode pointed out a range of several hundred
cords of good wood, which he told me he laid in last winter at four
dollars a cord. One fact like this is worth more than a page of ab-
stract terms expressive of abundance or scarcity.

In some places I observed that sumach was springing up and over-
spreading the ground with great rapidity. To the mere farmer this
is a pest; but the richness of this shrub in the tannin principle may
render it a source of wealth.

So much for the trees and fruits and the shrubs of this extraordinary
State. I shall, I know, be pardoned for dwelling so long upon them;
for to the practical man who may have thoughts of emigrating,
nothing can be more interesting.

 

LETTER IX.— Mineral Resources of Kansas—Magnesian Limestone, its
abundance and its excellence as a Building Material — Other Varieties
of Stone — Marble. — General Remarks.

Sr. Louis, June 25, 1867.
I aRRIVED in this city on Saturday morning from Kansas, and here I
intend to remain for a few days. In some respects this is a better
38 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

standpoint from which to view the great trans-Mississippi region
than any other. It is its natural metropolis; but I saw enough while
far up the Kansas and the Smoky Hill to satisfy me that St. Louis
will have a hard and wholesome struggle for the trade of the mighty —
and matchless empire which is springing up behind her. Here, almost
literally, a nation is born in a day, and the region through which I
have just been travelling is very nearly as accessible to Chicago as to
St. Louis, and to New York as to Pennsylvania.
I propose now to speak of the

MINERAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS.

Until I visited the State, my impression was that, although Kansas
was very beautiful and very fertile, its mineral resources did not
amount to much. I was not even aware, until I came out last fall,
that it has more abundant, cheaper, and better building stone than
any other State in the Union can boast; and the best of it is, that
these stone do not at all mar the soil or break the face of the country.
In my letters last fall I spoke briefly of these regular and far extended
quarries of magnesian limestone; but as I have given the subject
more close attention on this more leisurely excursion, I beg leave to —
return to the subject.

In the neighborhood of Lawrence, forty miles above the mouth of
the Kansas, this stone exists in abundance, but the quality, as a build-
ing material, is inferior. The strata are thin and the color is not
pretty. At Topeka, twenty miles further up, the quality is greatly
better, and many very handsome dwellings are to be seen in and
around that city constructed of it. It underlies all the upper surface
of the country, and crops out of the faces of the bluffs with such regu-
larity that it might be mistaken at a distance for tolerably well laid
artificial walls of range work.

As we ascend the river it becomes better and better. At Manhattan,
a pretty and flourishing town at the mouth of the Big Blue river, it is
surpassingly beautiful, of a very light, delicate and lively stone color,
and is so abundant, and so easily quarried and worked, that it is
cheaper as a building material than either brick or frame. It is
harder than at Fort Riley and Junction City, so that, although it
works easily under the hammer and chisel, they do not attempt to
saw it like timber, as they do at the latter places. I, however, prefer
the color of the Manhattan stone to any I ever saw. At Manhattan
it is something like the color of diluted milk; at Junction City it is
more like cream. But I suppose it is a matter of taste.

From-some distance below Fort Riley to a still greater distance
MINERAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS. 39

above Junction City —how many miles I cannot say—an enormous
and solid stratum of this rock extends, in some places over six feet
thick, and so soft that they cut it with axes in the quarry, and saw it
into any forms they please with toothed saws, just as timber is sawed.
Yet when exposed to the atmosphere for a while, it becomes almost as
hard as marble and quite as indestructible. As to this last and most
important fact I might have hesitated to take the words of the people
there, who are very enthusiastic on the subject, and who think that
they have an inexhaustible mine of wealth in that rock, had I not
seen the angles of the stratum, as its face protruded from the face of
the bluff, as sharp as ever, although they had withstood the beatings
of the elements for centuries

A company, with a capital of $40,000, has just been organized at
Junction City to saw up this stone, and otherwise work it into any
and every form which the market may call for. The President of the
Company told me that they proposed to saw it into slabs for flooring,
one and a half inches thick, and into tiles for roofing, three quarters
thick, and that they would turn it into any form which a lathe could
give to wood or metal. I believe this enterprise will be a success. I
saw some very large blocks of this stone at Topeka, on the ground
where they are just beginning to erect the State Capitol. It will
probably be one of the most beautiful structures in the country, but by
no means the mostexpensive. ‘This stone is practically inexhaustible,
and will furnish a large item of transportation to the U. P. Railway.

While at Junction City two tall, slender chimney-tops were pointed
out tome. They were built of thin blocks or slabs, set on edge —four
making a round—cut out, as I was told, with a common hand-saw.
They fitted so nicely that the joints were scarcely perceptible at the
distance I stood, and the whole had the appearance of slender marble
shafts. Mr. Martin, editor of “The Junction City Daily Union,” (an
energetic and enterprising Pennsylvanian, a good man, and one whose
life is likely to be a success,) had a block of this stone in his office
on which he showed me, by practical test, how a hand-saw operated.
It cut into it rapidly and smoothly, although the block had become
somewhat hardened by exposure to the atmosphere. Most of the
buildings in Junction City are of this stone, which gives to that new
place a very substantial and handsome appearance. For size and
finish some of the stores would appear well in any city.

Some miles above Junction City —how far exactly I cannot say—
the stone of the valley changes from lime to sand, and there is also a
perceptible change in the soil, although it continues to be equally rich.
At Salina, fifty miles above Junction City, they have abundance of
40 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

excellent building-stone—a fine-grained, compact sandstone. Lime-
stone also exists in abundance on the higher grounds. About twenty
miles beyond Salina, where we stopped for an hour or two on our way
- down, I saw on the opposite side of a small creek, about half a mile
south of the road, a bold rocky bluff. I walked across the intervening
prairie, which was like a flower-garden, as near to the bluff as I could
get for the stream. I found it to be a solid mass of rock—lI think it
was sand—of straight and beautiful cleavage, thirty or forty feet
thick. It was building-stone of excellent quality. Beyond that is the
brown sandstone of which I spoke in a former letter, and which
abounds about Fort Harker and Ellsworth. Professor Mudge, of the
Kansas State Agricultural College, and State Geologist for 1864, speak-
ing of this beautiful stone, told me that it belonged to the same geo-
logical era as the red sandstone of Connecticut, so largely used for
architectural purposes in New York, and is, like that stone, often found
marked with the tracks of large birds of a former period.

Limestone is found in many places far beyond Fort Harker, and is
probably‘abundant in all parts of the State. The lime made of that
of which I have spoken more particularly is white and of excellent
quality.

Marble, white, black and variegated, exists in many places and in
boundless quantity in the southern parts of the State. The white
is said to be pure, of an excellent quality and susceptible of tine
polish. I saw no specimens; but at Lawrence a polished specimen, of
black marble, taken from a quarry near Fort Scott, near the south-
eastern corner of the State, was shown me, which for lustre and fine-
ness of grain I have never seen excelled. It is somewhat harder than
any other American marble I have seen except the Potomac variety,
which is rather a conglomerate than a marble. For mantles, time-
pieces, &c., this Fort Scott marble would be admirable. There will
soon be a connection by rail between Fort Scott and its circumjacent
region and the Union Pacific.

But why, it may be asked, have I dwelt so long upon the single sub-
ject of the stone of this country that there is no room in this letter
for the coal, the salt, the gypsum and the metals? I have done so,
because stone is now and must ever be the principal building-material
in Kansas. The cities of Leavenworth and Lawrence are mainly
built of brick; but beyond these, where stone becomes more excellent
in quality, and the clay less suitable for brick-making, but few brick
buildings are seen. Even at Topeka the few brick houses to be seen
attest that the business of brick-making is a failure. AtSalina a few
brick have been made; but when thoroughly burned they more
MINERAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS. 41

resemble stone in color than ordinary brick. But as wood is scarce and
stone plenty, and good, and easily quarried, the latter must ever be
the cheaper material. Frame houses are costly, because much of the
lumber must be brought from St. Louis or Chicago. But the Great
Dispenser of blessings and benefits, if He has withheld some things
deemed essential to human comfort and well-being, has supplied with
a lavish hand other things even better. And when Kansas shall be
fully occupied, no people in this Union will have more beautiful or
more comfortable dwellings.

Of the other mineral resources of this State — which, in the language
of Professor Mudge’s Report, contains 78,418 square miles, is ten
times the area of Massachusetts, one-sixth larger than Missouri, and
about one-third larger than England—the extent and importance of
which astonished me, I shall speak more fully in my next letter.

 

LETTER X.— Mineral Resources of Kansas, continued — Coal —Salt —
Gypsum — Alum — Iron.

Sr. Louris, June 26, 1867.
COAL.

As no coal is yet mined in Kansas, except in a few places in the
southern counties, I cannot pretend to speak on this topic from my
own observation. I shall therefore draw largely from the report of
Prof. B. F. Mudge, State Geologist, printed in 1866. I had a long and
interesting conversation with that gentleman at the State Agricul-
tural College, near Manhattan, twenty miles this side of Fort Riley.
His views, as expressed in his report, have been but slightly modified
by his subsequent observations. Under the head of “ Coal Measures,”
he says:

“The lowest geological formation known in Kansas is represented
by the upper portion of the Coal Measures. It is a continuation of
the coal field which covers the northeastern part of Missouri and the
southern part of Iowa, and also extends into the Indian territory
south of this State. Like the deposits of those States, the dip of the
strata here is to the northwest, passing at a low angle of inclination
under the Permian, Triassic and other later stratifications. The Coal
Measures cover a larger area of the State than any other formation,
being nearly one-third of the whole. The fossils of this epoch are
formed all over the eastern part of Kansas, and exist as far as Fort
Riley.

“The line which separates the Coal Measures from the Permian
runs rather irregularly in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction.
Considering Fort Riley as on the line of average extent westerly, we
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

shall have (in the width of the State) the territory of the coal lands,
308 miles in length by 107 in average breadth, which gives an area
of 22,256 square miles. .....

“The Coal Measures here have undergone little change, and lie
nearly in their natural position. They dip on the average, as before
' stated, slightly to the northwest. In some parts of the State this in-
clination cannot be seen, and in some instances there is an anticlinal
ridge or dip in the opposite direction. .....

“Tt will be seen that this small disturbance of the strata is very
favorable to the opening of coal shafts. No ‘faults’ will be found in
the beds, and the probability of reaching the coal at reliable depths at
any given point will be nearly certain. It also gives us a larger area
of the coal field, as a higher inclination would soon carry the heads
too deep for mining.

“This portion of the State also shows a great uniformity of the
strata. About one-fourth of the whole deposit is limestone. South
of the Kansas river the strata show an increase of thickness, particu-
larly in the shales, accompanied with a slight increase of dip. This
increase of thickness is very marked in Miami county, as developed
by the oil and salt borings.

“Tt is well understood that the extreme upper portion of the coal
measures does not contain coal of the first quality, or seams of much
thickness. Those peculiarly favorable conditions of climate, &c.,
which were so important for the accumulation of vast amounts of
vegetable matter, had begun to change, so that the coal was small in
quantity and poor in quality. A fine illustration of this passing away
of the peculiarities of the vegetation of the coal period is to be seen in
the banks of the Neosho, about three miles from Council Grove. It
consists of a stratum of shale, two feet in thickness, full of the remains
of the vegetation of the period, but accompanied by a singular com-
mingling of the materials with the mineral substances, and the vege-
tation shows less of the transformation from its original state than
that of the true coal beds.”

Professor Mudge then gives in detail a report of the borings for
coal at Leavenworth, which proved successful. The parties are now
engaged in sinking a shaft preparatory to practical and extensive
mining. From itI gather that 142 feet of the strata passed through
were above the level of the Missouri river, and 230 feet below, when
a vein of bituminous shale and coal 94 feet thick was reached. At
116 feet below the level of the river, a vein of slate and coal was per-
forated; but as the second vein is known to be greatly superior, little
attention was paid to it. This second vein is known to be the same
that is largely worked on the line of the Hannibal and St. Joseph
Railroad, some fifty or sixty miles east of Saint Joseph, in Northern
Missouri, and which I examined with some attention when I was
there last fall. The vein there is about six feet thick, and is, I think,
between one and two hundred feet below the surface. The coal
MINERAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS—SALT. 43

looked very well, and much of it was brought up in large cubular
blocks, like our Pittsburgh coal. Professor Mudge says this vein
varies in thickness from five feet to six feet nine inches.

At Lawrence I visited, in company with Judge Bailey, of the Su-
preme Court, —to whom I am indebted not only for kind attentions,
but for much valuable information, —an establishment on the bank of
the Kansas, at the lower end of that city, where they are busily en-
gaged in boring for coal by steam-power—using apparatus and going
down at arate that could hardly be beaten in our oil regions—averaging
ten feet per day. When we were there, they had got down between
three and four hundred feet. They are confident of success, but may
have to go a thousand feet.

I did not hear of any other borings being in progress. In some
places in the southern counties coal crops out of the surface, and in
the Indian Territory south of Kansas, the above-mentioned heavy
vein crops out, and coal is as plenty as it is in Western Pennsylvania.

[Since this was written, a vein of coal of good quality, three feet in
thickness, has been discovered in the face of the bluff on the south side
of the Smoky Hill, a few miles west of Fort Harker, by Mr. Shoe-
maker, one of the chief contractors on the Union Pacific Road.]

SALT.

It will perhaps be new to most of the readers of the Gazette to be
informed that salt enough can be made in Kansas to supply the entire
country west of the Mississippi. Professor Mudge dwells at great
length upon the subject. He speaks of many springs and salt marshes,
one of the former of which is near Leavenworth. I make a short
quotation : —

“The great supply of salt which is to meet the demand for Kansas:
and the neighboring States lies at various points in a tract of country
about thirty-five miles wide and eighty long, crossing the Republican,
Solomon and Saline valleys. [This is north and west of Salina, where
I was water-bound for a week.] The signs of the deposit are seen in
numerous springs, but more frequently in extensive salt marshes. A
description of one of these marshes will be good for large numbers of
them, as they are very similar in their formation and appearance.
Take that in township 4, range 2, west of the sixth principal meridian
in the Republican valley, about seventy-five miles northwest of Fort
Riley. It is sometimes called the Tuthill marsh. The valley here is
wide, gradually rising to the high prairies so common in that part of
the State. The marsh covers nearly one thousand acres more or less
impregnated with saline matter. About one-third is entirely void of
vegetation, which the brine will not allow to grow. It is perfectly
level; and at the time of our first visit was as white as a wintry snow-
field with a crust of crystallized salt. ‘The marsh is of recent alluvial
At KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

formation, composed of sand and loam, from twenty to thirty feet in
thickness, brought down by the wash from the high prairies, which
rise gradually on three sides. In this alluvium, at various depths, are
found the bones of buffalo, deer, and antelope, who have probably
made this a resort for salt for long ages past, as they are seen to do at
the present time. Underlying this is the Triassic rock, which in Hu-
rope furnishes so much salt that it is termed the Saliferous system.

“The incrustation of salt”? (the Professor continues) ‘‘is frequently
three eighths of an inch in thickness. This is scraped up and used in
its natural state for salting cattle, &c.; but, for domestic purposes, it is
melted by being mixed with about twenty gallons of water to a bushel
of salt, when the mechanical impurities, sand, &c., readily settle. The
salt is again returned to a solid state by evaporation, The marsh,
after scraping, produces a second crop of salt in from five to seven
days of dry weather; and after repeated scrapings during the past
three years, yields as full a supply as at first. . ... The marsh re-
ceives the drainage of the valley slope about two miles in width and
about five miles from the north, and consequently the brine, as it
comes from the source below, must be constantly weakened by so
large a body of surface water.”

While at Salina, Col. Phillips told me much about these salt springs
and marshes, and particularly of a very singular spring which rose on
the very summit of a conical mound standing on the open plain some
forty or fifty feet high. He kindly invited me to return and take a
tour with him through that beautiful prairie region, interspersed with
salt springs, buttes crowned with iron ore, and gypsum beds sufficient
to supply the world. We would need a wagon, a tent, and ten or
twelve days’ provisions.

Salt will have to be manufactured by solar evaporation in Kansas.
_ The climate is admirably adapted to it; and, indeed, it is not only
the most economical method, but the article, when made, is better in
quality.

Gypsum abounds in Kansas. One vein of from four to ten feet in
thickness crosses both the Big Blue and Little Blue, a few miles above
their junction. South of the Smoky Hill at Salina an enormous de-
posit has been discovered and traced for miles. It it also found in
numerous places in the vicinity of the Solomon and Saline rivers.
Colonel Phillips marked it on a map in eight or ten places. The qual-
ity is quite equal to the Nova Scotia, and some thin veins of pearly
whiteness run through the heavy deposits south of the Smoky Hill.

Alum exists and might be manufactured to any extent in Saline
county, on the Smoky Hill. It is known to extend through a range
of fifteen or twenty miles.

Iron ore is found in considerable abundance in many places west of
TOWNS IN KANSAS.—LEAVENWORTH. 45

Salina; but as fuel is scarce where it is deposited, it is not likely to be
of much importance as a source of wealth.

Some specimens of tin ore have been found, but the mine where
they were taken has not been discovered. There isno gold norsilver,
for there are no igneous rocks.

As briefly as I could I have given some facts regarding the mineral
wealth of Kansas— enough to show that it is better supplied than
has been generally supposed. I shall add no general remarks.

 

LETTER XI.— Leavenworth — Old Fort Leavenworth— Rivalry with
Kansas City — Lawrence — Its Location, Beauty, and History —
Swift Retribution — Brief Mention of an old Friend.

Sr. Louis, July 1, 1867.

I po not know that I can embrace within the compass of one letter
all that I may wish to say under this head. I have already spoken
incidentally of some of the smaller towns I have seen, especially Junc-
tion City and Salina, and the last, the newest, and the most western
— Ellsworth. Rome, on Big Creek, sixty miles beyond Fort Harker,
is not a town yet; but in less than a year more it may be a wonderful
place. Rome! How I hate this putting of new wine into old bottles!
Had they called the new city Big Creek it would have been less ridicu-
lous, whatever might have been said of its euphony or appropriate-
ness.

LEAVEN WORTH.

This thriving, beautiful, opulent, and commercial city, in which they
claim to have a population of 27,000, is situated on what may be called
a valley prairie, but well lifted up above the floods of the Missouri,
and environed on the north and west— but not closely — by grace-
fully swelling heights, from the summits of which there are extensive
and grand prospects in all directions. Twice have I been driven along
these heights, and never shall I forget the charming panoramas that
were spread out before me.

Old Fort Leavenworth — established long before the days of the
Border Ruffians, while Iowa, and Kansas, and Nebraska were still
part of the great Northwest Territory, is located about two miles
north of the city, on the top of a high and abrupt bluff, the base of
which is washed by the Missouri, and west of which beautiful rolling
farms and prairies spread out in amplitude and grandeur—is a charm-
ing spot. Nature and art have combined to render it one of the
pleasantest retreats, whether for the citizen or the weary soldier, that
46 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Tever saw. Nota feature or a trace of grim-visaged war meets the
eye of the stranger. Even. its long-continued use asa great distribut-
ing post for the numerous forts and stations scattered over the far-
reaching “plains” is about ceasing, and ere long it will probably be
sold, including the rich and magnificent reservation attached to it. It
is very valuable property, and Congress should be well advised of that
value before it passes into private hands. Visions of a large fortune
are probably looming up before the minds of some sharp operators
even now in connection with Fort Leavenworth.

Some of the business streets of Leavenworth have much of the
aspect of our old and substantial commercial cities. Statistics of its
business would be both interesting and surprising; but it was not my
object to collect such things. I was through almost every part of the
city, and one thing impressed me strongly — the almost total absence
of apparent poverty and squalidity. Most of the buildings are brick,
and have a neat, fresh, and comfortable aspect. Outside there are
many elegant suburban residences which would do credit to any city.
And the trees !—nothing can surpass them for thrift and beauty.

But Leavenworth is somewhat in jeopardy commercially ; for unless
they bring a branch road from the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad
at Cameron to the east bank of the Missouri, opposite this city, and
throw a bridge across the river, so as to connect their branch of the
Union Pacific road, which runs to Lawrence, with the great systems
of railroads east of the Mississippi, Kansas City — which has a bridge
and a branch road to Cameron already made sure — will bear away
the palm. But let both have bridges, and both have branch roads to
Cameron, and I see no reason why Leavenworth may not maintain
the ascendancy. To bridge the Missouri at Leavenworth, however,
will be a much more difficult work than at Kansas City; but the peo-
ple of: the former place say it can be done, and that they will do it. In
my opinion they must do it, or be content to be thrown off the line.

LAWRENCE.

On my return from Fort Harker I stopped a little more than two
days in this historic, almost classical little city, around whose annals,
although brief in duration as the life of childhood, cluster so many
memories of stern devotion to principle, of heroic daring, of patient
endurance, of carnage and devastation, of horrid cruelties and fiend-
ish murders, at the calm recital of which, even yet, while standing on
the spot, the ears tingle and the heart grows sick. Twice given to
the flames by ruthless enemies, and its streets drenched in the blood
of its citizens, it has risen in superior beauty, and now stands before
LAWRENCE. 47

the eyes of the admiring stranger, the bright centre of matchless sur-
roundings, the very image and embodiment of security, peace, and
prosperity.

. The main part of the city lies on the south side of the Kansas, or
the Kaw, as it is more frequently called. The ground rises with a
gentle ascent from the river. The streets running in one direction
are named after the several States; those in the other are numbered.
The population is variously given at from seven to eight thousand,
and is rapidly increasing. Lawrence is a place of considerable com-
merce, especially with the fine district lying south of it, which is set-
tling up with great rapidity, and through which they are building a
railroad. (Of all these [ shall speak more particularly in another let-
ter.) Manufacturing of various kinds is prosecuted largely, especially
of household furniture, agricultural implements, and woollen goods.
I visited the woollen factory in company with Major Smith, son of
the Hon. George W. Smith, formerly of Butler, Pa., and was astonished
at the excellent variety of goods I saw. I shall show you, when I
return, a few small samples which I know you will pronounce equal
to anything of the kind made in the United States.

But it is impossible to convey to the mind of one who has never
been west of the Missouri an idea of the marvellous beauty of a city
set in such natural surroundings. From College Hill you take in a
range of miles in extent of which the eye could never weary — such a
singular blending of variety without blemish, of intense life, and yet
of profound repose.

_The history of Lawrence is written, and will never be forgotten.
But I cannot forbear to touch upon two or three incidents connected
with the Quantrell raid which affected me deeply. John Speer, Esq.,
editor of the Lawrence Daily Tribune, whose father was my neighbor
in Armstrong county, and whom I knew well in his boyhood, lost two
sons — lads of sixteen and eighteen. One perished in the flames of a
store in which he slept; the other escaped from his father’s office, and
was shot through the body in the street. He fell near a small frame
building. An officer ordered the building to be fired. Young Speer
begged one of the raiders to draw him away from the building, so that
he should not be roasted. He promised to do so, and crossed the
street to get a comrade to help him. Two came. One of them, after
looking at him attentively for a moment, drew his revolver and shot
him through the head. A third son, aged fourteen, saved his life by
giving a feigned name. The active part the father had taken in the
cause of freedom during the border troubles, rendered him and all
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

who bore his name objects of special vengeance. Mr. Speer’s residence
being out of town, he himself escaped.

A gentleman whose name was on the list of the doomed, a book-
seller, was called to the door, shot dead, and fell inside of the hall.
His wife, a young lady, was called out, and the house fired. She
begged hard to be permitted to remove the body of her husband from
the burning building, but this was rudely denied. One of the mis-
creants observed that she had something in her hand. It was her
husband’s ambrotype, which she had snatched up as she came out.
He took it from her, looked at it, and then threw it into the flames.

Nearly two hundred dead bodies strewed the streets, and an almost
universal conflagration had laid the town in ruins. No resistance was
or could be made. A small military force had been there a few days
before, but their commander, in spite of the remonstrances and en-
treaties of the citizens, sent them away, assuring them that there was
no danger. Poor man! he remained himself; but his house was sur-
rounded, and, in a vain attempt to save himself, climbed down into
his own well, which was under his roof. His house was fired and he
was smothered.

A strange fatality seemed to attend this lamentable affair on all
hands. A messenger was coming full speed to apprise the people of
the approach of the invaders. His horse stumbled and fell, and he
was killed. But for this he would have arrived in time to have had
the men of the town organized, and it could have been successfully
defended and saved.

I now come to what I believe to be unwritten history. I have it
from a gentleman of St. Louis, of great intelligence and probity.
Having done their work, the raiders, who were mounted men, rapidly
retreated towards the Missouri border. It appears that they divided
into two or three parties or squads. A swift messenger bore the
tidings of what they had done at Lawrence to the brave and determined
leader of a company or band of loyal Missourians. Believing that one
of these squads must necessarily cross the Osage river at a certain
ford, he posted his men —some under the dark shadow of the opposite
bank, and some in a corn-field on a road close by —and awaited their
approach. About one o’clock in the morning they heard them coming.
The men under the bank lay still until the raiders were nearly across
the river; then one simultaneous volley emptied twenty saddles, and
dead and wounded were alike swept down the strong current of the
Osage. Twelve only cleared the ford, to meet a similar fate at the
hands of the men in the corn-field. Not one escaped.

‘What was done with the wounded among the twelve?” asked
TOWNS IN KANSAS.

my informant of the captain of this band, after he had related the
incident.

‘“O, well, I don’t know; they all got into the river somehow.”

‘Oh! if that river could speak, what tales it could tell!” was the
passionate exclamation of that truly loyal but terrible man, before he
narrated that affair. Such men were made terrible by the stormy
scenes in which they lived and moved —scenes begun by border ruf-
fians battling for slavery, and continued by rebels.

I cannot close this notice of Lawrence without some mention of a
well-remembered friend of my early life, Judge Smith, formerly of
Butler, Pa., and who is well known to many of the readers of the
Gazette. He was in Kansas during all the border troubles, in which
he bore an active and conspicuous part, but rather as a counsellor
and guiding mind than as a warrior. Few men labored harder, suf-
fered more, or did more to bring that memorable struggle to a suc-
cessful and triumphant termination than he. I was glad to meet him
and his excellent wife —a Kittanning lady — and I highly enjoyed the
hospitality of their beautiful home, where, in quietude and peace, and
loved and honored by those by whom they are surrounded, they can
rehearse to their stranger friends the struggles, the battles, and the
triumphs of bygone days.

LETTER XII.— Towns in Kansas— Atchison— Kansas City — Wy-
andotte — Topeka — Waumega— Lecompton — Manhattan.

Sr. Lours, July 8, 1867.

I nave said that I should only speak of such cities and towns in
Kansas as I have visited. I did not visit Atchison, a lively and pro-
gressive city of several thousand inhabitants, situated on the west
bank of the Missouri, some fifteen. miles below St. J oseph, and a like
distance above Leavenworth. A railroad running directly west for
one hundred miles through a very fine country, starts here and is
already finished and in operation for a distance of fifty or sixty miles.
A law of Congress grants the company a subsidy in lands and bonds
for a distance of one hundred miles; and doubtless the grant will be
extended as soon as the road shall be completed that distance.
Whether it will be continued on until it reaches the Union Pacific
Railway of the Kansas, or that of the Platte, or both, is a question
not yet determined. Should it be continued in a southern direction
to the first-named road, it will probably reach it at or near Manhattan,
120 miles west of Kansas City. Atchison is connected by rail with
St. Joseph. .

4
50° KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

KANSAS CITY.

Is in Missouri, just across the line dividing that State from Kansas.
It is situated on a bluff on the south bank of the Missouri, about a
mile below the mouth of the Kansas river. At the mouth of the Kan-
sas the Missouri makes a great bend, changing its course from nearly
south to almost due east. It is a magnificent site for a city, whether
regarded in the light of its immediate location or of its commercial
possibilities as a great railroad centre. It is now the western ter-
minus of the Missouri Pacific road, and the eastern terminus of the
main line of the Union Pacific, Eastern Division. Soon it will have a
branch road to Cameron, on the Hannibal and St. Joseph road. Ere
long a branch of the North Missouri Railroad— which begins at St.
Louis, crosses the Missouri at St. Charles, and thence runs up through
the northern part of the State— will be made to Kansas City. Both
these important branch roads are to cross the Missouri at Kansas
City on the same bridge.

In addition to all these, Kansas City is to be one of the termini of
the great railroad which is soon to be made from several points in
Kansas to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico, which is but little over six
hundred miles distant, through one of me most beautiful and fertile
regions on the continent. The central stem of this road will reach
the Union Pacific at Lawrence; the eastern at Kansas City, and
probably the western will terminate at Junction City, at the mouth
of the Republican river, three miles beyond Fort Riley. The people
of the ambitious little city last named talk as if their branch was a
sure thing. That to Lawrence is sure, for they are pushing it on
vigorously, and expect to have twenty-four miles of it completed and
in operation by January next. As for the branch to Kaiisas City
there seems to be no doubt. All these roads run through very rich
agricultural lands, and all traverse good coal-fields before they come
together at or near the southern border of the State.

Such are the prospective advantages of Kansas City. To what it
may grow remains to be seen. Should its future be directed by men
of large, liberal and enlightened views, I cannot see how it can fail to
become one of the chief cities of this vast and magnificent region.
But should its destiny fall into the hands of narrow-minded, greedy
and unscrupulous adventurers, and should a rowdy element collect
there and give it a bad moral tone, then Leavenworth—which has
very nearly equal geographical advantages, and superior local advan-
tages—will maintain its position as the chief city of this important
centre. The struggle for the ascendancy between these two cities will
TOWNS IN KANSAS. ol

be an interesting one, and will probably conduce to the prosperity and
well-being of both.
WYANDOTTE.

This town is situated at the mouth of the Kansas, and is bounded
by the Missouri on the east and the Kansas on the south. The loca-
tion is neither ample nor pretty, and the aspect of the place exhibits
neither taste nor thrift on the part of the people. Kansas City is in
full view from this place, looking down the Missouri and across the
Kansas, just where its waters mingle with those of the greater river.

TOPEKA.

This is the capital of the State. The situation is pretty; and
although the city is somewhat straggling, and the streets in bad con-
dition, there are many handsome residences and several good hotels.
I was there but a short time, and can only speak of it in general
terms. I visited the ground where they are laying the foundations
of the capitol. It is to be built of the fine soft magnesian limestone
found around Junction City, of which I spoke in a former letter, and
will doubtless be a very handsome edifice. To be the seat of the
government of a State, however, is in my opinion a very questionable
advantage to a city. Topeka is on the south side of the Kansas river,
thirty miles west of Lawrence.

WAUMEGA.

This is a prettily situated new town on the railroad, some forty-five
miles west of Topeka. I did not stop, but I observed a fine large
hotel, and a fair appearance of business. The surrounding country
is very good; and as it is settled up, Waumega will grow.

LECOMPTON.

This town of bad political fame is, or was, on the south bank of the
Kansas, nearly midway between Lawrence and Topeka. Its record
seems to have driven people away from it, and but little of it remains.
I was not there.

MANHATTAN.

Leaving Junction City on Monday morning the 17th, Iran down
on the train twenty miles, and stopped off at this beautiful little town
at the mouth of the Big Blue, intending to remain one day; but I was
so much pleased, and found so many objects of interest, that I re-
mained two days.

I had letters which introduced me at once to the social life of the
place and to the most generous hospitality, and I had an opportunity
52 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

to look more closely into the character of the people generally than
of any other town I visited in Kansas. The population is only about
one thousand, but there is ample room on their magnificent town
site for a hundred thousand.

Manhattan was originally founded by alittle colony from Cincinnati,
who migrated from that city in a small steamer which they purchased
for the purpose. They steamed down the Ohio, up the Mississippi, up
the Missouri, and then up the Kansas to the mouth of the Big Blue.
That was their destination, and their boat never returned. It was
kept for a dwelling-place until provision for the families could be made
on shore. But before they left the boat, and before a single dwelling
had been erected, the spot for a school-house had been selected, and
measures taken for its immediate erection, so that they might have
at once a school for their children and a place of worship for all. This
was some twelve years ago, and long before the railroad which has
brought fresh life and prosperity to their town was even thought of.

Take it all in all, I think Manhattan and its surroundings the most
beautiful part of Kansas that I haveseen, which is the same as saying
that it is the most beautiful portion of this earth’s surface upon which
my eyes ever rested. The Rev. Alexander Sterrett, of the Presby-
terian Church, who, by a mandate which it was not in me to resist,
made me his guest, took me in his buggy to the summit of Blue Mont,
a conical eminence some two hundred feet high, about a mile from
town. Such a combination of the grand and the beautiful — the soft
green of the gracefully undulating prairies, the dark rich foliage of
the trees which skirted and marked the winding course of three
streams, the Kansas, the Blue and the Wild Cat, for miles north and
west and east, the beautiful farms with which the broad landscape was
dotted all over, with their comfortable-looking and really pretty stone
houses, and the bright and quiet-looking town in the valley beneath,
with the College on the rising ground in the rear—is rare indeed.
Senator Wade, who, with others of the Senatorial party of excursionists,
visited this spot, was greatly delighted, and uttered the rather strong
remark, that the view from the high mountain where, long ago, the
Evil One spread his panorama of temptation before the eyes of the
Redeemer, could have been nothing to that.

fT have spoken of the intelligence of this community and of their
virtues. By their fruits we may know them. The Congregational,
_ Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist denominations are all
represented, and each have a neat house of worship; but the most cor-
dial relations exist among them all. The people are too intelligent to
permit differences of this kind to divide them. Of this fact I can
TOWNS IN KANSAS. 53.

speak from my own observation. I was assured that no better graded
free school was to be found in Boston than here, and certainly they
have a very ample and well-finished school edifice. But a single place
exists in the town where intoxicating drinks are vended, and even
that is likely to be closed. Some time ago a man set up a billiard
table, but it would not pay, and he went off with it. In fact, idleness,
vice, and rowdyism are almost unknown.

There are many good stores in the place, and the principal street
has something of acity aspect. Buildin g8 ale going up rapidly, nearly
all of that beautiful stone of which I spoke in a former letter; and
altogether the place appears to be busy and thriving.

There is a fine water-power at Manhattan. Some three miles above,
by the road, but more than three times that distance by the course of
the stream, there is a considerable fall in the Big Blue — which is a
large, clear, and standing river—at the head of which a substantial
stone dam has been erected. A race of three miles across the level
neck of the peninsula, and down past the base of Blue Mont, will bring
the water to the town, and give a fall, as I was informed, of about
twenty-four feet —enough to propel avery large amount of machinery.
The Kansas itself, I am told, can also be made available for a like

purpose. I see no reason why this may not become an important
manufacturing town.

a eee

LETTER XIII.— Towns in Kansas — Junction City — Solomon City —
Salina — The Neosho Valley — The Seasons in Kansas —A Word to
such as may think of Emigrating.

Sr. Louis, July 8, 1867.
Or the remaining towns in Kansas which I have seen —Junction
City, Solomon City, Salina, and Ellsworth —I have already spoken
pretty freely, and need say but little more. They are all ambitious
little places, and are all the creatures of thisroad. ach is the centre
of a large and fertile district, with which it will grow.

JUNCTION CITY,

situated as it is at the lower end of the fine valley of the Republican
river, and only eighteen or twenty miles from the head of Neosho val-
ley —probably the finest wheat-growing portion of Kansas — with
which the people of that town hope ere long to be connected by rail-
road — has aspirations far beyond those of a mere county seat or the
centre of a good agricultural surrounding.

I was much pleased with the spirit of enterprise everywhere mani-
54 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

fested in this new and bustling place; yet there was much about it
that did not strike me favorably. To have a superabundance of
saloons, restaurants and billiard-tables, and not a single finished church
edifice or a commodious school-room, is not the way to begin a city.
There is a spirited daily paper published here by a Mr. Martin, a
Pennsylvanian; a gentleman who is probably doing more for Junction
City than any other man init. Of the peculiar building-stone found
here in exhaustless abundance, I have already spoken at length.

SOLOMON CITY.

This new city is situated at the confluence of the Solomon river and
the Smoky Hill, nearly forty miles west of Junction City. I did not
stop at it, and of its prospects I am unable to speak. If it can draw
to it the trade of the fine valley of the Solomon, it will be a prosper-
ous place. d

SALINA.

This is the place where I was flood-bound for a week, and of which
I have already spoken pretty fully. Being the centre and county
seat of a large and very fertile county, and near to the salt springs,
the gypsum beds, and other deposits of valuable minerals, its steady
prosperity is sure.

There are some minor places, and some newly laid-out towns, which
it is not necessary in this place to mention. These (spoken of in this
and the two preceding letters) are all the towns of any importance in
which I have been.

THE NEOSHO VALLEY.

This is the name of what is vlaimed to be the most fertile valley in
Kansas, and, next to that of the Kansas, the most extensive. The
Neosho river is a tributary of the Arkansas. It rises on the southern
slope of a ridge or swell of no great elevation, a few miles south of the
Smoky Hill, about the meridian of Fort Riley, and pursues a south-
eastern course until it reaches the neighborhood of the flourishing
town of Humboldt, one hundred miles south of Lawrence. Thence its
course is due south into the Indian territory and to the Arkansas.
Its length in the State of Kansas is not much less than two hundred
miles. The valley is wide. .

This valley is supposed to be the best wheat land in the United
States. Forty bushels to the acre is not unusual. A farmer at Car-
lisle, in Allen county, raised forty bushels per acre on a field of forty
acres. Allen county lies south of Lawrence. Mr. Ice, of Chase
county, which lies south of Fort Riley, raised in 1866 eight hundred
and twenty bushels of wheat on sixteen acres, being fifty-four and
NEOSHO VALLEY — SEASONS IN KANSAS.

one-fourth bushels to the acre. Judge Bailey, of the Supreme Court
of Kansas, who gave me these facts, attributes the extreme produc-
tiveness of that valley to the washings of the immense deposits of
gypsum existing on the head-waters of that stream.

Judge Bailey, in speaking of stock, told me that heifers in the south-
ern counties of Kansas almost invariably produce calves at the age of
two years, and frequently at a less age. He mentioned one case of
his own personal knowledge, where the age of the mother was less
than a year and a half. This precocity must greatly facilitate the
rearing of cattle in that country.

The town of Humboldt, in Allen county, has a population of over
fifteen hundred. It has four church edifices and good schools. It was
burned by the rebels in 1862. Emperio is another flourishing town
in the Neosho valley, south of Topeka. There are many others.

To show how that country is settling up, it is only necessary to
state the fact, which I find in a statement before me, made by official
authority, that during the first fifteen days of June, 1867, there were
located in the land office at Humboldt 49,320 acres of land.

In these letters I have said more about Kansas than I at first in-
tended, and I have done so because the more I saw of it, and con-
sidered it, and the more I mingled with its truly intelligent and
generous people, the more I was pleased with it. Perhaps equal to
Illinois in fertility, it is far more beautiful and salubrious. In no part
that I have seen is the idea of monotony even suggested. But it has
its drawbacks. Wood is scarce, and its short winters —confined to
January, February and part of March —are often sharp and severe,
with high winds. Water is abundant and good, whether in streams,
or springs, or wells. I drank none in that State that was not sweet
and wholesome. There is rain enough. From Leavenworth to Fort
Harker I talked with the people about this, and the unvarying testi-
mony was, that there had been no lack of rain since 1860, which was
a very dry year. And, contrary as it may seem to the common im-
pression, the drought of that year was less severe at Salina and Fort
Harker than in the more eastern portions of the State.

The seasons in Kansas are peculiar. The winters are dry. In the
latter part of March the rainy season begins, and continues into June.
After that there is but little rain oe following spring. The rain
falls in heavy showers. I witnessed some such as I never saw in the
Eastern States. <A rainy day is a thing unknown in Kansas, or what
we call a “drizzle.” After a shower the ground dries up directly.
The latter part of summer is almost uniformly clear and dry, and the
rays of the sun pour down through the clear atmosphere with great
56 ' KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

intensity ; but the heat is mitigated by an almost constant breeze.
The fall montbs, to the last of December, are dry and pleasant. I
was at Fort Riley last November, and found the weather bright, and
quite warm and clear, and the roads dusty.

Any man who may think of going to Kansas as a farmer, must bear
in mind that he needs a good deal more than a tract of land to begin
with. He cannot here improvise a dwelling in a day or two, as the
first settlers of the “ back-woods” did, and many things which could
there be obtained easily and at his door, are not to be had here. He
had better take at least a part of his house with him, and as much
money as will enable him to fence and break up at least one good
field. Arrange to have fruit-trees sent on as soon as the ground can
be prepared for their reception. Never mind agricultural implements,
for they can be obtained there cheaper and better than they can be
brought from the east. Plant trees quickly and plenty of them, for
fruit, for shade from the sun and shelter from the winds, and for
beauty. I only saw one farm in the Kansas valley that I thought had
trees enough, and it was very beautiful.

It is wonderful how vigorously, beautifully and rapidly trees grow
in that country. They really look as if they themselves rejoiced in
their fulness of life, and in the poetic language of the prophet, they
would ‘‘clap their hands.” I think I am more of a cold utilitarian
than an enthusiast; but truly those Kansas trees awakened emotions
that bordered on enthusiasm.

I know of no situation where a man, who should go out without
proper provision and forecast, and set himself down upon one of those
broad prairies, would feel so utterly destitute, helpless and forlorn.
But let him ascertain what he has to do, and prepare himself to do it,
and there is probably no place on this earth where, in so short a time,
he can have a valuable and productive farm and a most desirable
home.

LETTER XIV.— Education in Kansas— The Free School System —
State Normal School — Peculiar Mode of Teaching — State Agricul-
tural College — University of Kansas —~ Equality and Oommingling of
the Sexes in the higher Schools.

ALLEGHENY City, July 16, 1867.

FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Amonasr a people so intelligent and progressive as those of Kansas,
I was prepared to find that the cause of popular education was re-
EDUCATION IN KANSAS. . 57

ceiving, both from the State and the people, that care and attention
which it so justly merits. To show how it is progressing, as well as
to show to what proportions the Free School system has already
grown, I compile the following table from the Sixth Annual Report
of the Superintendent of Public Institutions. By it, at a glance, the
reader may note the progress made in a single year: —

1865. 1866. Increase.
Number of Districts . . . . 721 871 150
Number of Teachers : . 2 899 1,086 89
Number of Scholars enrolled . . 26,341 81,258 4,917
Teachers’ Salaries . . . . . $86,898 115,924 $29,026
Value of School-Houses . . . 122,822 318,897 196,075

Assessed in Districts for School Purposes, 106,589 192,620 86,031

In addition to these there are 83 Select Schools, with 113 teachers
and 3,228 scholars; three Academies and Institutes, nine Colleges and
Universities, numbering 89 Professors and Teachers, and 958 students.
Two of these are Commercial Colleges. All of these are private or
denominational institutions which have received no aid from either
the State or the National Government.

Still additional to these are three higher State institutions, viz.,
The State Normal School at Emporia, in Lyon county, about sixty
miles southwest of Lawrence, with three Professors; the State Agri-
cultural College, with five Professors, situate on a beautiful eminence
overlooking Manhattan ; and the State University at Lawrence, which
went into operation in September 1866. Of these three last-mentioned
institutions I am able to speak somewhat more particularly.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

The primary object of this school is the education of teachers. It
had been in operation about two years when the report of 1866, now
before me, was made. It is one of the most cherished and highly
valued institutions in the State. ‘Not merely to learn the lessons of
the day, but to learn how to teach it to others, is the object definitely
aimed at,’ say the visitors in their report. Of the system or plan of
teaching in that school the report gives so clear and graphic an
account that I know not how I can interest the reader more than by
copying an entire paragraph :—

“ One of the most noticeable points was the rigid persistence with
which the topical system of recitation was enforced. The old stereo-
typed system of “questions and answers” was utterly discarded.

Topics, oftener than otherwise consisting of a single word, were as-
signed to the pupils, and each, without the slightest reference to text-
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

books or memoranda, was required to rise and develop it in his own
language, and in proper consecutive order, with constant and copious
blackboard illustrations. Thus the topic assigned to a pupil might be
“The Andes.” He was required to sketch upon the board a complete
map of that system of mountains, with all their important ramifica-
tions — the valleys, plateaux, and lakes they enclose, and the rivers
flowing from them; to describe the height of all the different chains
and principal peaks; to give the local names, latitude and longitude,
altitude, climate and special characteristics of all the different points
of the map. When all this has been done, the topography of the
region in question is fixed in bold and indelible relief upon the mind
of the pupil. In like manner the pupils in Physical Geography were
required to illustrate and describe the ocean currents, the winds, vol-
eanic and tidal action. Those in history, to draw maps of important
historic regions and battle-fields. Those in Geology, to draw sections
of strata and sketches of fossils. In Grammar, Crosby’s novel method
of written analysis was used. Witnessing one recitation in arith-
metic would certainly excite in the most inveterate old fogy a supreme
disgust at the aimless and worthless “ciphering” of our District
Schools. In reading, the difference was, if possible, still more strik-
ing. In the elementary class the phonetic analysis of sounds was
taught, accompanied by remarkably neat and tasteful phonetic print-
ing of entire lessons upon the board. The result of this is, that nor-
mal graduates will understand the pronunciation of English words!
The utmost deliberation, distinctness and volume of utterance was
demanded. In the more advanced class the graces of elocution were
taught, with a somewhat extended study of distinguished authors.
In vocal music, all the pupils were required to thoroughly master the
rules of musical notation by a drill as rigid as any other study, and
the class singing was strong, harmonious, and spirited. A noteworthy
feature was found in the general teaching exercises. Under Prof.
Kellogg’s direction the entire school performed astonishingly with
rapid combinations of numbers; and Prof. Norton discussed and
elucidated the important political and scientific news of the day.”

A new, handsome, and commodious edifice has just been erected for
this school, and a boarding-house of stone, large enough to accommo-
date fifty boarders.

KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.

This is the only institution of learning I visited while in the State.
As before stated, it is near Manhattan, and from its windows, and
more especially from its lofty cupola, the view all around for miles is
exceedingly beautiful and varied. The institution is in a flourishing
eondition. I witnessed the recitation of several classes; and if there
were fewer novelties in the mode than are described above, the
instruction was none the less thorough. I was both surprised and
pleased at the readiness with which the students appeared to grasp
the subject-matter of the lessons in hand.
EDUCATION IN KANSAS. 59

In this College, Agriculture is taught as a science and by practical
operations. A lot of eighty acres of excellent land has been enclosed
with a handsome stone fence, and a beginning made both in agricul-
ture and horticulture. In time this will be very beautiful as well as
useful. It is not, however, what is called a manual labor institution.
An agriculturist is to be engaged, under whose supervision the opera-
tions of this department will be carried on. To the President, Rev.
J. Denison, D.D., and Professor B. F. Mudge, from whose report as
State Geologist I drew largely in speaking of the mineral resources
of Kansas, I am under many obligations for hospitality and kind
attentions while at their beautiful place.

President Denison, in his report, makes a few general remarks upon
the progress of Kansas, which I take the liberty to copy as exactly
pertinent to my object in making these brief notices:

“We already have a number of students from the counties west of
this point. The pulsations through the great artery of travel to the
Rocky Mountains and Santa Fé are already felt in the rapid increase
of settlers in these counties. The cars of the Union Pacific Railway,
H. D., will run to Salina, seventy miles west of this, by next spring,
and soon to the western limit of the State. The benefits of this thor-
oughfare of travel to the State are almost incalculable; its cost to
the State is very little. So much the more, then, can the State afford
to apply a portion of its increasing means to the development of its
institutions of learning. To the myriads of settlers that are coming
on this thoroughfare, and those pouring into its northern and southern
borders, the State cannot afford to refuse the means of education, or
be slow or parsimonious in providing the means for them.”

This college is less than twenty miles this side of Fort Riley. By
act of Congress it has an endowment of ninety thousand acres of land.

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS,

This is a new institution, the first session having opened September
12, 1866. It has an endowment of forty-six thousand acres. The
College edifice, which stands on a commanding eminence overlooking
the city of Lawrence, is a handsome stone building. I regretted that
I did not reach Lawrence on my return trip until the day after the
commencement exercises had closed; but the citizens spoke in glow-
ing terms of the manner in which the Faculty had discharged their
duties and led their students forward in sound learning. This insti-
tution places both sexes, so far as education is concerned, on an
equality. On this point President Rice, in his report, remarks:
“This, without doubt, is both just and expedient. It is no small
honor that the Mediterranean State should be the first to recognize
the rights of woman in her edugational system.”
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

The same is true, I believe, of the Normal School, as I know it is
of the Agricultural College at Manhattan. There I saw young men
and young women reciting together in the same classes, and certainly
there appeared to be quite as much vigor of apprehension and under-
standing on the part of the latter as of the former. Towards each
other their deportment was that of well-trained brothers and sisters
in the home circle. Kansas is sufficiently civilized to mingle the sexes
in the higher schools without danger of folly or impropriety.

 

LETTER XV.— Return of the Pond Creek Party—The line to Denver—
Pine, Timber, and Coal— The Mountain Snows must be avoided —
The Route and Distance to New Mexico— Superiority of the more
Southern Route — Surveying Party.

St. Louis, June 29, 1867.

THE gentlemen who went on to Pond Creek from Fort Harker have
returned safe and well. John D. Perry, Esq., the President of the
Company, accompanied them. They all speak in glowing terms of
the interest of the trip and of the beauty of the country through which
they passed. The savages did not molest them. Gen. Hancock, with
a small military force, as I said before, accompanied them up. The
return trip was made in stage-coaches.

Pond Creek is within eight or ten miles of the western boundary of
the State of Kansas; yet for the entire distance from Fort Harker to
that place the prairies are clothed with luxuriant grass, and the soil
is rich and deep. Timber is scarce, but there seems to be no lack of
water. The soil is better than that I have already described between
Salina and Fort Harker, a deep brown sandy loam, well adapted to
the culture of both corn and wheat. All these gentlemen concur in
representing the country beyond Fort Harker as still better than that
over which we passed on this side of that point. They speak of the
prairies of the Buffalo grass region as exceediugly beautiful and pic-
turesque, and that the country is sure to settle up as fast as the rail-
road progresses.

At Fort Wallace the excursionists organized a meeting for the pur.
pose of giving expression to the effect which all that they had seen
and experienced had upon their minds. The resolutions adopted
strongly and earnestly commend this great enterprise to the favorable
consideration of Congress and the country, and urged its immediate
prosecution,

Pond Creek (Fort Wallace) is an important point on this line; for
there or in that vicinity it is that the line to New Mexico leaves the
THE MOUNTAIN SNOWS.

line to Denver. The distance from Pond Creek to Denver is 187 miles :
to Santa Fé, by the stage road, it is 402 miles. Both lines pass over
good ground for railroad purposes, and through regions well adapted
to the rearing of stock. I am told that the plains of Colorado are not
adapted to agriculture, except where irrigation is feasible; but as it is
not very long since we were told that this whole region, through a
considerable portion of which our party travelled with great delight,
was an uninhabitable desert, this story about the indispensableness
of irrigation may be of the same kind. For more than four hundred
miles west of the Missouri river, as we can testify, no irrigation is
needed. On the route to Denver, the line of the road will pass through
extensive tracts of excellent pine timber, and over inexhaustible mines
of coal,
THE MOUNTAIN SNOWS.

Hiverything on this side of Denver is very good. There is neither
desert nor difficulty of any kind, but what lies beyond Denver causes
prudent men to pause and consider. Jt seems now to be a settled point
that the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, will be carried through
New Mexico and Arizona to its ultimate and original destination, and not
through the stupendous system or labyrinth of mountains, which
begins at Denver, and ends only on the banks of the Sacramento.
Into the natural gorges of these mountains, and into the deep artificial
cuts required for a railroad, the light, dry snows of that region will
drift in such quantities as to defy all human skill and power to keep
them clear. Hven as late as the first of the present month, as I have
been informed, some of the passes through the mountains, between the
heads of the Platte and the valley of Utah, were still covered with
from ten to twenty feet of snow —not snow which had fallen upon
them, but which had been driven in by the winds, and over which men
and teams were passing as upon solid ground. But locomotives and
trains cannot run upon the top of snow-drifts, and where they are so
enormous, it is certain that they cannot run through them. It is
equally certain that those long, deep, narrow natural gorges or arti-
ficial cuts cannot be kept clear by any muscular or mechanical force
that can be employed for that purpose, for if cleared to-day, they may
be filled again to-morrow. To travel through such a region in the
winter season —and the winter in those mountains is nearly half the
year— would be attended with such frightful peril thet few would
have the hardihood to brave it; for imagine a passenger train caught
in a snow-drift, far from any human habitation, and buried, perchance,
in a few hours, under a snow-bank in which even the train itself would
soon cease to be a distinguishable object.
62 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Some propose to put the road under roof in all such places; but this
is easier talked about than done. Moreover, the advocates of that
expedient appear to forget that fire is an adversary still more formi-
dable and uncontrollable than snow. It may suit the temper of some
high-spirited and energetic gentlemen to expunge the word impossible
from their vocabulary, and, having a mighty government at their
back, to imagine themselves to be omnipotent; but prudent men, such
as those who manage the Hastern Division, hesitate to rush blindly
into difficulties with which neither they nor any other men are able
to grapple. 8

They have, however, that which their energetic rivals of the Platte
line have not—an admirable alternative. They can drop to a more
southern latitude, where there are no snows to obstruct them, and no
stupendous heights to scale. This southern deflection of the line
begins at or near Pond Creek.

THE ROUTE TO NEW MEXICO.

The following information of the country between Pond Creek and
Santa Fé I have from W. 8. Stone, Esq., agent of the Santa Fé Stage
Company:

Miles,
From Pond Creek to Fort Lyon on the Arkansas river, about 500
miles west of the State of Arkansas—a good buffalo grass

region, rolling prairies, estimated, . 65
Thence up the valley of the Purgatoire to ieee the ate of

the mountains—an excellent agricultural valley; the uplands

 

rolling prairies, fertile, and covered with buffalo grass, . . 126
Thence to summit of Raton eB . . . . . . . 15
Thence to Red river, . . 14
Thence to Santa Fé, through numerous valleys ae several en

can towns, some of considerable size, : : : ’ . 182

402

This is the stage road. It is very probable that the railroad line
will run a few miles east and south of Santa Fé to Albuquerque, via
Fort Union, on the Rio Grande, at the eastern base of the Raton
Mountain, and thus avoid some mountains, and keep in a better coun-
try. Fort Union is the largest distributing post for military stores in
the West. The country all the way from Pond Creek to Albuquerque
is probably the finest grazing region in the United States; but it isa
region utterly valneless until opened and made accessible by railroad
communication. But when it shall be so developed, it will become a
SURVEYING Parry, 63

source of immense national welthandprosexity. Throughout the
greater part of that immense pastoral regiQn, cattle require no stored
food in the winter season, for the grasss of the prairies, whether green
or dry, is always good ra nutritious

The recent discovery of rich gold places in New Mexico aidiie
greatly to the importance of this rad. Mn factit seers that from
the point where the mountains are first mached, on the western
border of the vast buffalo-grass plains, tothweshores of the Pacific, the
line of this road will run through one containows field of the precious
metals, besides much timber and coal.

Leaving Albuquerque, the line throu gh tIheheat of Arizona—that
richest of our territories in gold and silver,buat the most difficult to
reach —presents no serious difficulties. Long wallexys, rmnning in the
right direction, bear it onwards towards the border of California,
whence, turning the southern extremity of the great Sierra Nevada
range, it passes up through Southern Califomia, midway between the
mountains and the ocean, to San Bram cisco, torrchin g the fine port of
San Diego by a branch, and the head of the Gulf of California, and
the port of Guaymas, if need be, bzy ot Hers.

This route may be somewhat longer than that through Utah and
Nevada, but its gradients will be sommuch less that it will more than
compensate for this lengthening of the Taine Tox all purposes for
which a railroad is desired to be shorter, to wit, ereater speed and
economy of transportation, it is believe dthatthisis realby the shorter
line. But whether it is longer in miles thn the other is not yet
known; for the length of line ne cesaary +0 vimd through the laby-
rinthine mountains of Utahis yet an anknown quantity. Be that as
it may, it is certain that its gudeswillbe lighter, that it can never
be obstructed by snow, and that the coventry it will Open up and
develop, whether agricultural, or pastoral, «rm ineral, is tenfold more
valuable.

A party of gentlemen of scientific a bilitzy, about eighty in number,
headed by General W. W. Wright, chief engimeer, and comprising,
among others, Dr. John Leconte, of the Smithsonian Institute, as
geologist, Dr. Perry, who was engigred in the survey of the line
between the United States and Mexi<o, with eminent topographers
and photographers, are now engaged im a careful examination, survey,
and development of this route. The qpartay is out under the auspices
and employ of this company. Other sumrveying parties of equal
ability are now engaged in locating the roid between Pond Creek
and Denver.
64 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

LETTER XVI— General Subject of Routes discussed — Description of
the Valley of the Platte— The Region between the Heads of the Platte
and the Sierra Nevada— The great Utility of both Roads— The
Route beyond Kansas— Fertility of the Country on the Arkansas and
Purgatoire Rivers— Immense Deposits of Coal — Pine Timber — New
Mexico, its Minerals, and other Resources.

ALLEGHENY Crry, July 12, 1867.
GENERAL SUBJECT OF ROUTES DISCUSSED.

In a former letter I stated the fact that the Union Pacific Railway
Company, Eastern Division, had resolved to carry the main line of
their road to the Pacific, not directly across the Rocky Mountains,
through Utah and Nevada, and over the Alpine heights of the Sierra
Nevada range, but by a more southwestern route through the south-
eastern part of Colorado, east of the Rocky Mountains; thence through
New Mexico and Arizona, to the southeastern border of California,
and thence, through the great valley of Southern California, to San
Francisco.

This important change of route will be attended by many and great
advantages, the chief of which, probably, is, that the tremendous snow-
drifts of the route directly through the mountains will be avoided.
Another is, that the more southern route is level compared with the
other. On the line of the Central Pacific Railroad, running from
Sacramento to Salt Lake, the Sierra Nevada Mountain summit ig
seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, which is one thousand
feet greater elevation than any other railroad summit in the world;
and the Rocky Mountains cannot be surmounted by any pass between
the Rio Grande and the heads of the Missouri at much, if any, less
altitude. On the other hand, on the line through New Mexico, Ari-
zona and Southern California, there are no formidable mountain bar-
riers; and where the elevation is considerable, as in the pass of the
Sierra Madre, west of the Rio Grande, there is no snow. The Sierra
Nevada, on that more southern route, has sunk down almost to a plain,
and up through the magnificent valley of Southern California, cele-
brated for its extraordinary productiveness, there is no difficulty,
neither is there any difficulty between the Sierra Madre range and
the Colorado river, which space embraces the entire breadth, from
east to west, of the territory of Arizona.

The country through which this more southern route runs is all
valuable — very much is rich in soil, and still more, especially in Ari-
zona, is rich in minerals of almost every kind. It is a region of vast
_

VALLEY OF THE PLATTE. 69

and varied productions, but one which never can be properly deyel-
oped until a great line of railway shall connect it with the States on
and east of the Mississippi, and with the cities of the Pacific coast.
But when so connected and made easily and quickly accessible, will
give an impulse to our national prosperity beyond anything known in
our past experience.

I have no inclination to depreciate the grand and unexampled en-
terprise of our California brethren in pushing a railroad from Sacra-
mento across the Sierra Nevada range, into the rich mining State of
Nevada. Their energy demonstrates that, although in choice of
routes they may find it necessary to traverse the dreary and serpen-
tine valley of the Humboldt to reach the region of Salt Lake, the
great work will still go on, conferring immense material benefits, and
generously rewarding them for their outlay. Noram [I at all inclined
to underrate the other great work of making a road from Omaha, up
the valley of the Platte, and over the Rocky Mountain range, to
the great valley of Utah; for this, too, will be a road the value of
which it would be difficult to estimate; as over it Southern Dacotah,
Idaho and Utah, at least, can be reached. But as to the value of the
country over which these two divisions of one great line will pass, as
compared with that of the “ Eastern Division” through Kansas, Colo-
rado, New Mexico and Arizona, there is an incalculable difference.

Alexander K. McClure, Esq., editor of the Chambersburg Repository,
who went up the U. P. Railroad of the Platte in May last, thus de-
scribes the valley of that river:

“There are but few settlers on the line of the road; and after we
enter what is called the Platte Plains, about Fort Kearney, there
seems to be little that can ever invite the husbandman. The valley
or vast plain is bounded on every side by vast bluffs, ranging from
twenty to thirty miles apart, and the bluffs seem to be terribly sterile
and repulsive. The Platte river rolls lazily along south of the rail-
road, hugging the southern bluffs at times, and again striking out
near the centre of the valley; but it tires the eye to look at it and
its surroundings. It is a murky, shallow, treacherous stream, with
shifting sand for its bed, and naked banks skirting it most of the way.
I have looked for miles along its banks without seeing so much as a
shrub, much less a tree; but at times, where it nears the bluffs, it puts
out along its banks a stunted, miserable growth of cottonwood. ....
The valley is a miserable waste, and I fear ever must be.......
I have not found a single stream in it but the Platte river — the
whole plain thus far, north of the river, not furnishing a single tribu-
YY... 24. There is not a habitation on the route for nearly two
hundred miles, but such as are necessary to accommodate the railroad
and travel.”

5
66 8° KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY. BEYOND.

=. An intelligent gentleman of close and accurate powers of observa-
tion, who, in the summer of 1859, travelled leisurely across the ; conti.
nent ‘to California, furnished. the author with an ‘extended and mi-«
~- nutely graphic description of the: country.over which he trayelledui_.
- t0 wit, the valley ‘of the: Platte, the mountains north of Denver, the
‘ basin of Utah north of Salt Lake, the valley of the Humboldt, and,

thence to ‘the Sierra’ Nevada--very nesrly the route.of the Union

Pacific Railway of the Platte, and that of the Central; Pacific , Rail.
vi road from Sacramento to Salt Lake.: Upon reaching the eastern base
of the’ Sierra Nevada range, under the head. of .* General Remarks
| upon the region traversed, ” he said > sgdsdSi 1 pai teat x wa, A NUry

©The country passed over from “Bort Laramie to this place i is ‘good
for nothing, unless I except Bear River Valley; and that is said to be
too’ cold for agricultural purposes.» Certainly it is good for nothing
- else.::; With the: exception of that about Bear River, the land is en-
i erally poor and. rocky..;..The, low bottoms on the, head of the Hum:

boldt are rich;. but, ihere, we had ice before the ‘middle of August;
~ and from that down it is ‘too dry, even’ if it would. otherwise do.
Then. there is no‘ timber, except a little on the main’ range of the
Rocky Mountains,'till we come to: Bear: River, and none from. that,
except: few: scrubby: cedars, until we come, to the; Sierra Nevada
* mountains. };The, Indians live,on.it, but, how. no one. knows. :And —
then nine-tenths of this extensive region are mountains. . - fo. not
believe that, it will ever be anything but: what it now is.”

Ibi is manifest. that 2 ‘road through. ‘such Ey region must ‘be ‘aatnly
dependent upon its through business for its revenue. .Yet the enter-
prise is a good one; for by no other can the Black Hill country,
Southern Dacotah, ‘thé ‘great Salt Lake valley, and the head of Lewis .
river, which runs; ‘through the best part of Idaho, bé reached. But —
« whether it is, destined. ever to be a safe and, ‘reliable route to Califor-
nia remains to ‘be. seen... How its, managers are to cope ’ with the ‘tre-
mendous. difficulties, sopographical and climatic, towards. which. they
are driving with unprecedented, speed, ‘and with’ a boldness which, in

4 A

e yet solved. Jeon gait missile ned ‘htt trcitclen iid a “y oe on
' Since’ the managers of the: Union. Pacific. “Railay. of the ‘Kansas, .
with a forecast eminently wisé and prudent, have resolved to seek the
shores of the Pacific by a, more southern line, strictly speaking, there ©
/ ds no: Jonger. any rivalry; or ‘competition. between’ these. two. great
_ national ‘enterprises. :- » Hach , will develop the region through which .
. It passes, be its natura] value what it may;'and both may reach the ©
: bay of San Francisco, one approaching it from the northeast, through
_ Northern California, ‘the other from the southeast, through Southern

B® Sra,
Cy — "5 tS es et Kyl

THE ROUTE BEYOND KANSAS, 77 Le 67

- California.’ “The one will. render Utah. and | N evada’ ‘accessible, “and “
oH probably be the means of rooting out the gocial. abominations exist-
ing in the former territory; the other: will bring the beautiful plains»
» and valleys, and the innumerable mines of gold, silver and copper of.
_ the more southern range of States and territories within’ easy reach
. of the great body of the American people. And whatever may be the |
~ amount and value of the through trade of the latter; whether more or
“ less, its way business cannot fail to be enormous,: “Although but little
» more than halfway through Kansas; it is ‘already profitable; as I have
“ heretofore shown, both. to the Government and the ‘Company; ; and I:
- now intend to show. that there. is not likely to be a section of a hun-
dred miles on the entire route but will contribute handsemely i in some
shape to its reveriue ‘and: support. a now propose to speak 3 more ° par.
ticularly of - yh. ANGE iM elaine lt Wopk GUS Te noob add Fire hs
“Hidsigebda dir 9 ‘THE ROUTE® BEYOND: KANSAS." Seth STE
Pond Creek; ‘the point to which’ a number of thé gentlemen of our.
; party’ extended ‘their: excursion,’ ‘is two. hundred ‘miles’ west of Fort -
- Harker, up the valley of the Smoky: ‘Hill,‘and four hundred and twen-
ty-five miles west of the Missouri river at Kansas City. : It is one
hundred’ and eighty- seven miles’ southeast of Denver, ‘and four’ hin- |.
dred ‘and. two! miles’ northeast of ’ Santa Fé." It is'to this point that ©
- the Government subsidy of bonds to this road, ‘granted by Act of Con-
gress, extends.” It -is ‘within’ some ‘six’ or’ eight miles' of" the’ eastern |
line!of Colorado, anda ‘ttle 3 nearer to’ ‘the southern line” ‘of Kansis |
than the place of beginning: PUAN key FO Meade yea OF 22
. i: Of the country through which thé road passes in the State ‘of ‘Kan- a
~ gas; I have already spoken 60 ‘fully’ that I need ‘not’ advert to it here,
~ At Pond Creek; or somewhere in that Vicinity;‘the southwéstern line
leaves thé line to: ‘Denver —now' being: located ’ (and which és by no
means: abandoned) — and passes’ ‘over''a “rolling buffalo-grass prairie |.
_ “divide” to Fort} Lyon,‘on' the“ Arkansas, ‘a distaned of about’ sixty- —
~ five miles.: An extensive district of very good agricultural land lies: 2
around. Fort Lyon.’ Leaving Fort Lyon, the line follows the valley of «. .
the Pur gatoire* river, in a southwest direction, over one hundred and :
_twenty milés — still’ ‘through’ a buffalo-grass region —to, the eastern Se
base of the ‘Raton. mountain, which is covered with, a heavy growth ©
of valuable timber, and. abounds in, coal of superior, quality, 5 some of, ae
the: veins being from eleven to thirteen fect i in thickness. TS Ae gee
/-# This name is is generally, ‘but incorrectly,. written ‘Purgatory on our maps: i Out on PS
the plains some of our fellows have corrupted it into ¢ Picket-wire.? tei 03/- :

. ¢ Since my return home I received a letter from 2 gentleman in St. Louis: stating Hs
* that Mr. Sanderson, proprietor of the Santa Fé 6 stages, had brought to that ony § some ©.

 
68 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

[ While compiling these letters for publication in this form, I saw a
letter from a gentleman of great energy and intelligence, with whom
Iam well acquainted, and who is exploring that country. He writes:

“This part of Colorado is said to be the richest and best in the
whole territory; and with its splendid climate, tempered in the sum-
mer by the mountain breezes, and so mild in winter, that such snow
as falls does not lie more than two or three days, its pure, dry atmo-
sphere — these valleys being a mile above tide —together with the
views of the Spanish Peak, Greenhorn Mountain, and the main range
of the Rocky Mountains, which are constantly visible, I honestly be-
lieve that, when made accessible by the railroad, it will be the great
sanitarian of the United States.”

In another place he says: “The country I passed through yester-
day, at the foot of the Raton Mountains, and in the valleys of numer-
ous creeks which empty into the Purgatoire, is very rich and beauti-
ful, and contains numerous ranches. It resembles the best part of
East Tennessee, is exceedingly healthy, and well protected from the
extreme rigors of winter, so that animals do not require to be shel-
tered.”

Again he says: —‘“The pine timber a few miles west of Trinidad,
on the Purgatoire, and extending up that mountain country, is repre-
sented as exceedingly large and abundant. Mr. Bransford thinks
that Eastern Kansas will rely for its supply of lumber upon this coun-
try as soon as the railroad is built.” He fully confirms all I have
stated as to the abundance of coal in that country. |

Skirting the eastern base of this mountain for over one hundred
miles—the mountain being on the right and the vast and fertile
plains of northwestern Texas on the left—passing Fort Union, the
great distributing depot for government supplies for all the South-
west — the line turns more to the west, and reaches the Rio Grande at
the town of Albuquerque, seventy-five miles southwest of Santa Fé.

NEW MEXICO.

Near the head of Purgatoire River the line enters the territory of
New Mexico, after having run about two hundred miles diagonally
across the southeast corner of Colorado—the most fertile portion of
that territory, and in which, as already stated, there are extensive
deposits of coal and forests of pine timber. New Mexico has an area

 

specimens of excellent bituminous coal, which he took from veins of from eleven to
thirteen feet in thickness, which crop out of the slope of the Raton mountain, 170
miles southwest of Pond Creek, on the natural route of the Union Pacific Railway

of the Kansas. It is hardly possible to estimate the value of such a coal mine in
such a locality.
NEW MEXICO.

of 121,201 square miles, nearly two-thirds of which lie east of the Rio
Grande, which bisects the territory the entire distance from North to
South. The northwestern quarter of New Mexico is among the most
rugged and mountainous regions on the continent, but rich in miner-
als. The entire eastern portion is comparatively level, being the
most western portion of the great fertile plains which slope towards
the Mississippi and the Gulf, and are drained by the more southern
tributaries of the Arkansas, the Red River and some of the larger
streams of western Texas. The southern half, from Albuquerque to
the southern boundary, is a country of diversified aspect, made up of
hills and valleys. The valleys are exceedingly fertile and peculiarly
adapted to the culture of the vine. Mr. Hall, in his valuable work,
‘‘Guide to the Great West,” remarks:

“The valleys and slopes in the eastern section consist generally of
very productive land, the soil in this part being adapted to the culture
of sugar.” Again he says: “Cotton of good quality is grown in the
southern part of the Territory; and the wine of the region, from
Scorro, or even from Albuquerque, to the Texas line at Franklin, or the
Mexican line at El Paso, is celebrated for its fine quality. Peaches
are excellent and abundant in the southern part of the Territory.”

There is probably no portion of North America so well adapted to
the rearing of sheep as New Mexico. Already millions are found
there; and were there a communication by rail, their numbers could
be indefinitely increased. While out beyond Fort Riley I saw many
Mexican wagons, with large bodies, loaded with wool, not in sacks,
but in bulk. These wagons were unloaded into warebousés at the
railroad stations, just as hay is thrown loose into a barn and tramped
down. I examined some of this wool and found it to be of very good
quality. As it requires at least two months for one of these wagon
trains—each wagon drawn by four yoke of oxen and attended by
two men—to make the trip from Santa Fé to Junction City, the
expense of carrying this wool cannot be less than one hundred and
fifty dollars per ton. With heavier return loads, and more ascending
grade, it takes three months for the Santa Fé trains to make the
return trips.

But, after all, the great value of New Mexico is in its mineral trea-
sures, gold, silver and copper. Discoveries of rich mines of gold have
recently been reported, but the information is yet too vague to war-
rant more than a general mention of the fact. Bituminous coal exists
in great abundance on the eastern slopes; and near the Old Placer
gold mine, about twenty-seven miles southeast of Santa Fé, and but a
few miles from the contemplated route of this road, ANTHRACITE CoaL
has been found. Of this Mr. Hall says:
70 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

“The coal bed at the Placer Diggings is very accessible and easily
worked, measuring from four feet eight inches. to four feet ten inches
in thickness, and is generally very free from earthy or other impuri-
ties. It seems to be a true Anthracite, not semi-bituminous, but as
destitute of bitumen as the Pennsylvania variety.”

Crossing the Rio Grande at Albuquerque, the line of the road pur-
sues a western course over the Sierra Madre, (or, as some maps have
it, the Sierra de los Mimbres,) and enters Arizona about midway
between the northern and southern boundaries of the Territory. But
of that important Territory—containing, probably, more mines of
gold, silver and copper than any other portion of our national domain
of equal extent—I propose to speak in my next letter.

a
LETTER XVII.— Arizona — California.
AutrauHEeNny Orry, July 31, 1867.

ARIZONA.

Tus large Territory, the area of which is 120,912 square miles, is
bounded on the north by Utah, on the east by New Mexico, on the
west by California, and on the south by Sonora, one of the most valu-
able of the States of Mexico. Its northern line is on the same parallel
as the southern line of Kansas, 37 degrees; its southwestern corner,
on the Colorado river at Fort Yuma, about forty miles above tide, is
in latitude 32 degrees 30 minutes.

From the Rio Grande at Albuquerque, where it is intended that this
road shall cross that river, to the eastern boundary of Arizona in lati-
tude 35 degrees, the distance is about 120 miles. From the river to
the summit of the Sierra Madre range is about ninety miles, up which
the ascent is said to be gentle. On the western side the country
descends, first to the table-lands of Central Arizona, and thence to
Colorado and the Gulf of California, a distance of four to five hundred
miles.

Entering Arizona a little north of the middle of the eastern bound-
ary, the route runs directly through the midst of the Territory, pass-
ing by the town of Prescott, the capital, thence in the same general
direction, down the valley of Williams river to its mouth in latitude
thirty-four degrees thirty minutes. To this point the Colorado affords
good steamboat navigation at nearly all seasons from the head of the
Gulf of California.

Between the point where the route enters the Territory to the
town of Prescott, a distance of about 150 miles, the country has a
considerable elevation, is well watered, and has a healthy and delicious
ARIZONA, 71

climate. This is the region spoken of by Hon. Richard McCormick,
Secretary of the Territory, in the following extracts from a valuable
paper which he prepared for Hall’s “ Guide to the Great West:”

“Yavapai county embraces a part of Arizona as yet unknown to
map-makers, and in which the Territorial officers arrived hard upon
the heels of the first white inhabitants. Until 1863, saving for a short
distance above the Gila, it was, even to the daring trapper and the
adventurous gold-seeker, a terra incognita, although one of the richest
mineral, agricultural, grazing, and timber divisions of the Territory,
and abundantly supplied with game. Yavapai county is nearly as
large as the State of New York. The Verde and Salina rivers, tribu-
taries of the Gila, which run (southwardly) through its centre, abound
in evidences of a former civilization. Here are the most extensive and
impressive ruins to be found in the Territory —relics of cities, aque-
ducts, acquias, and canals, of mining and farming operations, and of
other employments indicating an industrious and enterprising people.
Mr. Bartlett refers to these ruins as traditionally reported to him, to
show the extent of the agricultural population formerly supported
here, as well as to furnish an argument to sustain the opinion that this
is one of the most desirable positions for an agricultural settlement of
any between the Rio Grande and the Colorado............ Ki

‘In timber lands Yavapai county exceeds all others in the Territory.
Beginning some miles south of Prescott, and running north of the San
Francisco Mountain, is a forest of yellow pine interspersed with oak,
sufficient to supply all the timber for building material, for mining,
and for fuel that.can be required for a large population.

“Prescott, the capital, is in the heart of a mining district second,
in my judgment, to none upon the Pacific coast, ‘Che surface ores of
thirty mines of gold and silver and copper, which I had assayed in
San Francisco, were pronounced equal to any surface ores ever tested
by the metallurgists, who are among the most skilful and experienced
in the city; and so far as ore has been had from a depth, it fully sus-
tains its reputation. The veins are large and boldly defined, and the
ores are of varied classes, usually such as to be readily and inexpen-
sively worked, while the facilities for working them are of a superior
order. At the ledges is an abundant supply of wood and water; near
at hand are grazing and farming lands, and roads may be opened in
any direction without great cost. The altitude is so great that the
temperature is never oppressively warm; the nights, even in mid-
summer, are refreshingly cool and bracing.”

Such is the district through the midst of which the Union Pacific
Railway will run for two-thirds of its way across the Territory of
72 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Arizona—the very kind of country to furnish the largest amount of
local trade in proportion to its area and population, as well as to add
most rapidly to the general wealth of the nation. Would we pay off
our national debt and return to a metallic currency, there is nothing
that we can do to bring about those ends so effective as to open a
highway into this now remote and almost inaccessible national
treasury.

From Prescott to the western boundary of the territory, which is
the Colorado river, the line of the road will probably follow the valley
of the Williams river, one of the principal tributaries of the Colorado,
which has its source a few miles west of that town. Of this river Mr.
McCormick says:

“Ascending the Colorado, the first point of interest is Williams’
Fork. It is the largest tributary of the Colorado, and has its rise in
the interior country almost as far east as Prescott. It is not naviga-
ble, but usually has a good body of water. Some of the richest copper
mines in the territory are on its banks, and have already been exten-
sively and profitably worked.”

Several silver mines are marked on the national maps in the valley
of this river. At its mouth is the town of Aubry, said to be in a fine
location for.a city. This is likely to be the principal city of Arizona.
It is a very important point on the line of this road, for here the first
navigable water on the Pacific side is reached; and from this point a
large trade, both down and up the river, and indeed with the entire
Pacific coast, may be established in advance of the road reaching its
ultimate destination—San Francisco. The most western steamboat
navigation on the Atlantic side of the continent, on this line, is at
Kansas City ; the most eastern on the Pacific side is at Aubry. But,
even after the road shall be completed, Aubry will continue to be an
important commercial centre, and pour upon this road from that great
river a large amount of business; for the entire country above is sur-
passingly rich in mines of gold and silver, especially the latter, and the
river is navigable for hundreds of miles during part of the year.

It is, 1 am informed, the opinion of some of our army officers that
at Fort Mohave, about half a degree north of Aubry, is a better place
for a railroad to cross that river into California. I, however, adhere
to the line here indicated until careful surveys west of the river shall
determine the question between these two points.

I have thus traced the route of the Union Pacific Railway through
the Territory of Arizona, on a line which the company believe to be
the most practicable, and the one which will enable them to render
accessible the best and richest portion of the great region lying be-
CALIFORNIA.

tween the Mississippi and the Pacific coast. While in some mea-
sure they run round the tremendous mountain system of the inte-
rior of the continent, they bear as close to it as they can. They
run but little below the 35th parallel, which is only two degrees
south of the southern line of Kansas.

CALIFORNIA.

At Aubry, as before remarked, the line of the road enters the State
of California. Thence its course is westward until it turns the south-
ern extremity of the Sierra Nevada range, and thence northwest all
the way up the great valley of Southern California, to the Bay of San
Francisco, a distance of between four and five hundred miles.

This is known to be one of the finest valleys on the continent. The
Sierra Nevada bounds it on the northeast, the Coast Range on the
southwest —the mountains, the valley, and the coast all running in
parallel lines. The average width of this valley is not much less than
one hundred miles; and although it has not yet been twenty years in
the possession of people who did anything to develop its resources, and
although it is cut off from the ocean by the Coast Range of mountains,
and is destitute of any navigable rivers, except for a short distance
southeast of the Bay of San Francisco, it is already renowned through-
out the world for its extraordinary productiveness —its wheat, its
grapes, and many other things. Its only commercial avenues are
wagon-roads; yet within a year bread made from wheat which grew
in that valley has been on our tables here-in Pittsburgh.

Of Southern California as a grape-producing country, Mr. Hittel
remarks:

“California vineyards produce ordinarily twice as much as the vine:
yards of any other grape district, if general report be true. The
grape crop never fails as it does in every other country. Vineyards
in every other country require more labor, for here the vine is not
trained to a stake, but stands alone.”

Mr. Hall remarks: “The grape region extends from the southern
boundary a distance of 595 miles north, with an average breadth from
east to west of about 100 miles.” This area extends a considerable
distance up the Sacramento river, which flows southward through the
same valley, and breaks through the coast range almost directly east
of San Francisco.

_The large county of Los Angelos, which is the second county that
our road reaches after entering the State, is the principal vine-grow-
ing district in California. In 1864 it had 3,570,000 vines. A Califor-
nia paper of 1865 mentions a vine growing at Oroville, on the western
74 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

slope of the Sierra Nevada, which was planted in 1859, which has
grown straight and almost of a uniform size, and measured thirteen
inches in circumference for ten feet from the ground. Its yield of
fruit that year was estimated at eight hundred pounds.

The quicksilver mines of California extend from Mendocina county,
north of San Francisco, along the Coast Range, all the way to the
Colorado river, and on the northeastern slope; consequently this road
will run near to them for a distance of over four hundred miles.
This is an interest the extent and importance of which it is yet im-
possible to estimate, as these mines have been but imperfectly devel-
oped thus far,

Such is the region through which the line of this road will run from
Aubry, on the Colorado, to San Francisco. When this great valley
shall be occupied — as it soon would be were this road made through
it—no part of the route, not even Kansas, would furnish more local
business both in freight and passengers.

 

LETTER XVIII.— Length of the respective Routes. — Latitude and
Longitude of the principal Points.
ALLEGHENY City, August 3, 1867.
LENGTH OF THE RESPECTIVE ROUTES,

Tux length of any route for a railroad from the Missouri to San
Francisco is not yet known. The best that has been done has been
to make proximate estimates, To keep down the gradients of a road
through an extensive mountain region to what is required on a rail.
road, necessarily extends the length greatly beyond that of ordinary
wagon roads through the same region, Across plains, such as those
which stretch between the Missouri and the mountains, on both the
Kansas and the Platte routes, the difference is not much between the
wagon road and the railroad.

The enterprising gentlemen who are pushing forward the Union
Pacific Railroad of the Platte with a rapidity without example, pro-
pose to run directly across the mountain region which begins a little
beyond where they now are at work, and ends only on the banks of
the Sacramento, while those who, with no less spirit and energy, are
urging forward the Union Pacific Railway of the Kansas, propose—
and I think very wisely—to bear a little southward, and thus avoid
all the formidable mountain ranges, It is certain that by so doing
they will greatly reduce their gradients. They will avoid the tremen-
dous snow-drifts of the route through the mountains, and find a far
LATITUDE AND LONGITUDR. 15

better and more productive country through which to run, Of that
I have already spoken..

But will they lengthen their route from the Missouri to San Fran-
cisco by running round this labyrinth of mountains by a single grand
detour, rather than by winding round them in detail, as they would
have been compelled to do, had they adopted the other alternative?
No man can answer that question yet. But if they have made it
longer, they have also made it leveler, safer, and certainly more profit-
able. I know that the impression generally prevails, that this southern
route through New Mexico and Arizona will be longer than if it had
been run through Utah and Nevada, But, after all, that impression
may be erroneous. With much care I oe prepared the following
table of the latitude and longitude of points on the two routes—that
of the Kansas road, and that of the Platte, The points on the Union
Pacific Railway of the Kansas are printed in Roman characters;
those of the Union Pacific Railroad of the Platte in talics,

Latitude and Longitude of the Principal Points on Both Routes.

North of South of
Latitude. Longitude. San Franc. San Franc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kansas City, : : a+. + 39° 94°357 = 19157

Omaha, . . . . . , . 41° 20/7 98°58 8°85, —__
Pond Creek, : . . . . 88°507% 101°50% 1° §
Platte Station, North Platte, : . 41°15” =101° 8° 307
Albuquerque (Rio Grande), ‘ - 85° 5” 106°80% -——— 2°40”
Bridger’s Pass (Summit of Rocky Mouniain), 41°357 107° 8° 504
Prescott (Centre of Arizona), ; - 84°357% 112° 5/ 8° 107
Northern End of Salt Lake, é , : 41°45 113° 4°

Aubry (Colorado River), . mit - 84°20% 114°10/ 3° 25”
Northern Bend of Humboldt River, bee on 41° 8% 117°40/ = 3°20

San Francisco, , , . : | 37°40’. . 1229807. ps * ware

It will be observed from this that the Platte road really bears more
to the north of the parallel of San Francisco than the Kansas road
does to the south of it. And it will also be observed that the point
at which the Platte route attains the summit of the Rocky Mountains
is twenty-five geographical miles further north of San Francisco than
Aubry, the extreme southern deflection of the Kansas route, is south
of it. Again, it will be observed that the north bend of the Humboldt
river is more than three degrees nearer to the meridian of San Fran-
cisco than Aubry, while it is almost as far north as Aubry is south,
A careful study of this table will shake the opinion that the southern
line must necessarily be longer than the northern, even should the
latter not he more tortuous, I do not assert that it is not longer,
76 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

because I do not know; but I have laid before the reader data from
which, with the aid of a good map, he can make calculations for him-
self.

The Platte road will be completed if it is in human power to do it,
for the legislation is complete and the appropriations are made; but
even should the difficulties be such that it can never be a Pacific road,
yet as an avenue to the vast interior region into which it runs — Ne-
braska, Southern Dakota, Southern Idaho, and Utah —it will be of
incalculable value — worth far more than it has cost. Over the other
road, however, no such contingencies are pending. There are neither
impracticable mountain passes nor uncontrollable snow-drifts. There
are no formidable obstacles, either topographical or climatic; and the
entire country through which it passes is good. It will open up a
country which, when its manifold resources shall be developed —as
they soon will be when made accessible — will add to the national
wealth immeasurably beyond what it will cost. In fact it will cost
the Government nothing, for it will be selfsustaining. It is that
already, and its revenues will unquestionably increase in a ratio
greater than its onward progress.

LETTER XIX.— Eastern Connections — Table of Distances.

ALLEGHENY Crry, August 5, 1867.

As already stated, the main line of the Union Pacific Railway, BE. D.,
begins at Kansas City, which brings it in line and connection with
the old Pacific Railroad of Missouri, which begins at St. Louis and
terminates at Kansas City, the western boundary of the State of
Missouri. So it might with truth be said that the Union Pacific Rail-
way of the Kansas begins at St. Louis. By a branch road from Law-
rence to Leavenworth, a little more than thirty miles long, belonging
to the same company, the Kansas road has a second terminus on the
Missouri, over which the enterprising people of Leavenworth hope to
turn the trade of all the roads east of the Mississippi which do not
converge upon St. Louis.

But with the rivalry between Leavenworth and Kansas City we
have nothing todo. For the present we shall take Kansas City as
our initial point.

We have already seen how St. Louis is connected with Kansas City
by the old Missouri Pacific, 283 miles in length. In a few months
Chicago will have almost as direct a connection with it, by way of
the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy road to Quincy, 265 miles;
thence to Cameron, on the Hannibal and St. Joseph road, 170 miles;
TABLE OF DISTANCES.

thence by the Cameron and Kansas City branch, on which they aye

now vigorously at work, 55 miles. Total from Chicago to Kansas
City, 490 miles.

From Kansas City to the Mississippi river at St. Louis, 283 miles
From Kansas City to the Mississippi river at Quincy, 225 miles
Difference in favor of Quincy, . . . ; i . 58 miles

At Quincy a bridge across the Mississippi is in progress, which will
enable cars to run through from Chicago, or from New York and
Boston for that matter, to the farthest extremity of the Union Pacific
of the Kansas, for the gauge throughout the entire distance, whether
through Pennsylvania or New York, except the New York and Brie
and the Great Western, is the same. In a short time a bridge across
the Missouri at Kansas City will be built.* So far, therefore, the City
of Chicago has the advantage over St. Louis for the trade of the
magnificent region through which the Kansas road runs, and that
advantage it will retain until a bridge shall be constructed over the
Mississippi at St Louis.

DisTANCES FROM Kansas Crry to New York THROUGH
PENNSYLVANIA.

Via St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Steubenville, Pittsburgh, and Allentown.

Miles.
Kansas City to St. Louis, . : ‘ . : . . 283
St. Louis to Indianapolis, . . . 7 : i b . 262
Indianapolis to Columbus, . . : ; ert a spay . - 188
Columbus to Pittsburgh, . . ; . : ‘ ‘ : 193
Pittsburgh to New York, via Allentown, . : , : . 431

1357

Via Cameron, Quincy, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Allentown.

Kansas City to Cameron, . : ; . : » -, OD
Cameron to Quincy, . . : : : : . : . 170
Quincy to Chicago, : . : : i i : ‘ - 265
Chicago to Pittsburgh, . oh ile < ‘ a " : 468
Pittsburgh to New York, as above, . . : : i . 431

1389

eS

* A correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, writing from Kansas City, August 21,
1867, states that the corner-stone of the Cameron Railroad bridge across the Missouri
at that city was laid that afternoon amid great enthusiasm, and in the presence of
5000 people. He says: ‘“ Assurance is given by Mr. Chanuette, the chief engineer,
that the structure will be completed in one year. The bridge will be of iron, 1400
feet long, with a draw in the channel of 362 feet. There will be six stone piers, with
spans of 250 feet, and a carriage-way as well as a railroad track. This bridge, with
‘the one now building across the Mississippi at Quincy, will give us a through con-
nection, without breaking bulk, with New York and Boston.”
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Via Cameron, (Hannibal and St. Joseph R. R. to Quincy,) Toledo, Wabash, and Western
R. R., Fort Wayne and Pitisburgh R. R., and Penna, R. R., via Allentown to New

York. Miles,
Kansas City to Cameron, . : . ; : . . 55
Cameron to Quincy, . : . ; ' ‘ : : 170
Quincy to Springfield, Illinois, : . ; / ; ; . 4
Springfield to Fort Wayne, ; : : : ‘ : ; 268
Fort Wayne to Pittsburgh,,. 6 . ‘ ‘ ‘ . 820
Pittsburgh to New York, as before, . . : : : : 431

1358

From Kansas City to Philadelphia the foregoing distances are
respectively 76 miles less, to wit, 1282, 1813, and 1283.

Distances FRoM Kansas Crry to New York, THROUGH THE STATE
or New York.

Kansas City to Chicago, via Quincy as above, . . Y . 490
Chicago to Buffalo, via Southern Michigan, &e., . ‘ ; 588
Buffalo to Albany (N. Y. Central), : ; ‘ . . 298
Albany to New York (Hudson River R. R), . ; : . 144
1470
Via Dunkirk and the New York and Erie Railroad.

Kansas City to Chicago, ; : . . 490
Chicago to Dunkirk (8. Mich. Lake Shore, &e. y . é . 498
Dunkirk to New York, : . . . . 460
1448

It will be seen from this at a glance that the Union Pacific Railway
of the Kansas accommodates quite as well the trade and travel of the
basin of the Great Lakes as of the valley of the Ohio, — that no loca-
tion on the farther bank of the Missouri could have been more fortu-
nately chosen as the starting-point for a great road across the conti-
nent than the mouth of the Kansas river. All the great lines east of
the Mississippi can reach it with equal facility and at very nearly
equal distances. By two of them — one crossing the Mississippi at
St. Louis, the other at Quincy —the difference in distance between
Kansas City and New York is but one mile; and the difference be-
tween the routes through St. Louis and Chicago, from one of those far
distant points to the other, is only thirty-two miles.

 

LETTER XX.— Branch Roads— To Galveston from three Points in
Kansas — To Denver — Down the Rio: Grande into Mexico— To
Guaymas— To San Diego—LHffect upon Mexico— General Remarks.

ALLEGHENY Crry, August 6, 1867.
A CAREFUL examination of a good map of North America will con-
vince any one who will make it that so sure as the Union Pacific
BRANCH ROADS. 79

Railway of the Kansas — or, as it might be more briefly and definitely
designated, The Kansas Pacific Railway —shall be completed to its
ultimate destination, numerous important branch roads will almost
simultaneously be made through many parts of the extensive and
magnificent region which stretches all along the southern and south-
eastern side of the main line. Three of these branches will reach tidé
water,—one at Galveston, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico ; one at Guay-
mas, in Sonora, on the Gulf of California; and one at San Diego, on
the main coast of the Pacific ocean, nearly five hundred miles south-
east of San Francisco.

I appeal to the map again to show how admirably this main line is
calculated to put all of the Eastern, Middle, and Northwestern States
of the Union, east of the Missouri, into social and commercial connec-
tion with all that rich and productive portion of this continent, along
the northern border of which it runs. The trade of a million of square
miles can be drawn into it without going much beyond our own bor
ders. But when to this is added the fact that it will reach the Pacific
ocean at three several, far separated and important points — Guaymas,
San Diego, and San Francisco —it requires no further argument to
prove that it will be the greatest thoroughfare in the world.

This is a road that will develop the country through which it and
its branches will pass and create its own business. We excursionists
saw how it was doing that already in Kansas; and a few days ago,
while in Philadelphia, I saw how the officers of the Company there
were hurrying forward hundreds of cars and a corresponding number
of locomotives, to keep pace with the rapidly increasing trade.

I propose now to notice briefly some of these branches, either
actually commenced or in contemplation.

The first is that whereof the main line commences at Lawrence and
rans almost directly south through Kansas, through the Indian Territory
and through Texas, until it meets the Central Texas road, which runs
almost due north from Galveston. The entire distance from Lawrence
to Galveston is about six hundred miles, and the route is through a
country of unsurpassed fertility and beauty from one end to the other.
When I was at Lawrence in June, they were vigorously at work on
this road, and expected to have twenty-four miles of it finished and in
operation by January, 1868. The people of Kansas City are to have
a branch of this road from their town, which will probably unite with
the Lawrence branch in the valley of: the Neosho, near the southern
border of the State. This branch, which also runs through a splendid
country, will almost.certainly be completed at an earlyday. Another
branch of this road is projected from Junction City southward to the
KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

head of the Neosho valley — which is only about 18 miles distant — and
thence down that richest of the Kansas valleys until it meets the main
line from Lawrence near the southern border of the State. This, too,
will unquestionably be made sooner or later.*

From Pond Creek a branch of the main line will be made to Denver,
187 miles in a northeasterly direction, partly through a buffalo-grass
region, and one which presents no difficulties. This branch will run
near to the northeast base of Pike’s Peak, and for a considerable dis-
tance through a region of good coal and pine timber, both of which
will be of great value to all that country.

Between Pond Creek and Albuquerque branch roads into the mag-
nificent agricultural and pastoral regions which stretch far away east
and south of the main route, will doubtless be made. But of these I
cannot speak definitely.

From Albuquerque a branch road down the Rio Grande to El Paso
will quickly follow the construction of the main line, as it would tray-
erse a very rich and productive country on our side of the national
line, and open a direct avenue into the Mexican State of Chihuahua.
It is a fine country, rich in both soil and minerals; and, if wrested
from the hands of the fierce Apaches, who now hold possession of a
large portion of it, would soon fill up'with a far better population than
have ever yet occupied it.

From some point in Arizona a branch road from the main line to

Guaymas, through the rich mineral State of Sonora, will unquestion-
ably be made at an early day. A connection with the Pacific ocean
at that point would be only second in importance to that made at
San Francisco. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon it.
_A shorter branch road would put this road in connection with
Libertad, another port near the head of the Gulf of California, and a
still shorter one with the head of the gulf at the mouth of the Colo-
rado river.

The last important branch is that which will run from some point
on the main line west of Aubry to San Diego, on the main Pacific
coast, but a short distance north of the southern extremity of Califor-
nia. It has an excellent harbor, and with such a connection with the
Eastern States of the Union, there is hardly a doubt but that it would
soon become an important commercial city. Being so much nearer
to the great communities in and east of the Mississippi valley, it would

eee

_* A letter from Kansas City, of August 21, says: ‘‘Arrangements relative to work
on the Kansas City and Fort Scott road have been brought to a final settlement, in-
suring the early completion of that road.” This is the same enterprise of which I
have just spoken.
BRANCH ROADS. 81

have many advantages over its more northern rival. San Diego is a
little more than five degrees east of San Francisco.

If ever Mexico is to be redeemed from anarchy and misrule, it must
be effected through some such agency as this. The conviction is
fastening itself upon the public mind that, at an early day, we shall
be compelled to exercise a controlling influence in that country; and
were our people made to comprehend how quickly and easily that
could be done through the instrumentality of this road, by its exten-
sion into Mexican territory as proposed, it would give great satisfac _
tion, especially when they reflect that no violence will be required,—
nothing which can either humble Mexico or excite the jealousy of
other nations,— that the object of their desires can be aceomplished
in the pursuit of legitimate and mutually beneficial commerce, free
from interruption by foreign powers, and exempt from all rivalry ex-
cept that which would arise among our citizens. For our manufac-
tures, we should be paid in wool, hides, animals and minerals, and
after a little time, when labor becomes more settled and secure, we
should receive the more valuable products of a tropical growth, and
have the satisfaction of impressing upon these people our principles
of justice, our system of government, and an enlightened Christian
civilization.

Avoiding the malarious belt which stretches along the entire east-
ern seaboard of Mexico, we can reach the great interior basin and the
western coast by a route eminently healthy and salubrious. In this
way we may expect the bulk of the commerce of that great basin to
be carried on through the United States, and over the system of roads
of which this will be the forerunner and main trunk. Many trains,
conveying passengers and merchandise, not more than five or six days
from St. Louis or Chicago, will daily cross the line of Mexico en route
for all parts of the interior and the western coast, and south to the
regions of the tropics, where cotton, sugar, coffee, and all the tropical
fruits are, or may be, with our energy, produced in abundance.
Those regions may be reached as easily as San Francisco, and a trade
may, and certainly will, be established equally valuable, to be enjoyed
by this road without a successful competitor. It would be a great
error, if, in the projection of our continental railroad system, we
should neglect to construct the main line in the direction go plainly
marked out by nature by which this trade may be commanded.

I have thus, with the best lights I could obtain, traced the entire
line of this magnificent national road, this world’s highway, from the

Missouri to the Bay of San Francisco. My aim has been to deal with
6
82 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

facts which have a practical bearing upon the questions of the feasi.
bility and the success of the enterprise, and which will enable the
Citizen, the Patriot, the Statesman, and the Christian, to calculate the
results which are likely to follow its completion. It has been my
desire to give to the political economist data by which to settle the
question of profit and loss— the probable revenues of such a road
through such a country, and having such termini. We know that the
ardent Patriot will say, “Make it; for it will be the glory of our
country.” The Philanthropist will say, “Make it; for it will confer
blessings and benefits upon the whole human race.” The Christian
will say, “Make it; for it is essential to the progress of Christian
civilization westward, the only direction in which it has ever success-
fully travelled ;— make it; for it will be a highway for our Gop.” But
the Practical Man says, “Make it, if it will pay;” and we know very
well that all the generous impulses must stand in abeyance until this
last practical calculation shall be satisfactorily settled.

ey

LETTER XXI.—Will it Pay ?

Tuts, after all, is the practical question—the only one, indeed,
which the rigid economist or the capitalist cares to ask. To say that,
because the enterprise is one of unexampled vastness, magnificence
and grandeur, therefore it will be profitable, would be to offer logic
which no cool calculator would think of accepting. To say that,
because it links two vast oceans together, and with them two hemi-
spheres, therefore it must surely pay, would be to offer an argument
equally loose, inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Were we to prove that
two-thirds of all the tonnage that Western Europe and Eastern Asia
exchange would pass over this road, we should still be far from demon-
strating that the enterprise would be pecuniarily profitable. Great as
would be the revenue arising from this enormous foreign traffic, it
would fall far short of what would be necessary to meet the operating
expenses and the interest on the cost of a road of such length. Like
all other roads, the Union Pacific must be mainly dependent upon its
local trade and travel for its revenue. Its foreign business will be
very large; but, to be financially successful, its local and home business
must be still larger.

I have traced the course of this road from the Missouri to the Bay
of San Francisco, and set forth in terms of calm and sober verity, as
I believe, the character and resources of the country through which it
will run, and respectfully challenge any man who still doubts, to point
WILL IT PAY? 83

out a single section of one hundred miles that is not likely to contribute
its share of a revenue sufficient to make this a paying road. One
portion will have a large surplus of the products of the soil; another
portion, the people of which draw their wealth, not from the soil, but
from the mines, will need this surplus. Ores will be sent to fuel and
fuel to ores. Thus there will be a large and perpetual exchange
between the agricultural and the mineral portions of the route — be-
tween the fertile prairies of the East, the coal mines and forests of
the first mountain slope, and the gold and silver and copper mines of
New Mexico, Arizona and California. There is probably no single
line of railroad on the globe the products along the border of which
are at once so various and so dissimilar. This peculiarity of the line
of road under consideration will lead to an exchange of commodities
to an enormous amount, between communities hundreds of miles
asunder. The farmer of Kansas will probably find his best market in
Arizona.

But we are not left to conjecture and vague generalities as the
basis of our estimates. During the month of May, 1867, this road
was commercially open to Salina, a distance of 187 miles from Kansas
City. The gross earnings for that month were $172,106.28, which
amount, divided by 187, gives a business at the rate of eleven thousand
dollars per mile per annum. During the same period the net profits
were $72,000, or at the rate of $4,567 per mile per annum. The
amount of business done for the Government during that month — at
rates greatly below what had hitherto been paid for freights by wagon
— was a little over fifty-one thousand dollars, one half of which passed |
to the credit of the Company on its Government bonds, enough to pay
the interest on all the bonds of the Company, and leave a surplus suf-
ficient to extinguish the principal ten years before the bonds mature.
The remainder of the month’s business, amounting to more than
$120,000, was principally local trade and travel—so rapidly is the
rich valley of the Kansas, through which it passes, filling up with an
active and prosperous population.* If such results can be shown in
the infancy of the enterprise, surely we may safely calculate upon
still richer results as the work progresses, and as the great wave of
population which is following it shall swell to larger and larger pro-
portions.

* The return for the month of June, owing to the flood, fell off some 25 or 30 per
cent.; but that for July was larger than that for May, the western commercial ter-
minus being the same. Now the end of the commercial line has been extended to
Wilson’s Creek, nearly 250 miles beyond Kansas City.
84 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

LETTER XXII.— The March of Empire.
WueEn Bishop Berkeley penned the oft-quoted line —

‘‘ Westward the Star of Empire takes its way,”—

the idea expressed by the phrase was hardly understood. “ What is
empire?” asks a recent writer, and then he goes on to remark: “ We
have suffered our understandings to be warped by past and existing
abuses on this point, until the word suggests to the mind the over-
grown dominions of the Cesars, or the huge and beastly realm of the
Czar. But God himself gave us the true idea of empire when he
said, ‘ Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, AND sUBDUE
iv.’ This is what Bishop Berkeley means by the ‘Star of Empire ;’
and this is what the people of our country are now doing. This is
Empire in its true sense —the dominion of Man over Nature, not of
man Over man.”

For ages warriors have striven to hew out empire with the sword,
and kings have labored and crushed their people to the dust, in build-
ing huge piles, in the vain hope of rendering those empires immortal.
Human toil beyond calculation has been expended in erecting things
which, when erected, were of less value than the ground upon which
they stood, and oceans of blood have been spilt in subduing regions
which a little well-directed and beneficent enterprise would have sub-
dued a thousand-fold better. This day the pyramids of Egypt stand
in their hugeness, immobility and silence, the emblems of a false, dead,
unprofitable and non-progressive civilization ; while the railroad, with
its rushing train, following the sun in his western course, marks and
represents a Civilization of the opposite type.

Actuated by old and false ideas, the Emperor of France tried to
push empire westward by sending his armies into Mexico; and we
have just witnessed the tragical end of that attempt to rule the world
of the present day by the enforcement of obsolete ideas. Now let
Joun D. Perry, of St. Louis, a modest American citizen, send his
army of peaceful laborers and track-layers across the border of that
unhappy country, and order, peace, and true empire will result at once.

The railroad is the great agent and pioneer of civilization. Let
any one go away beyond the Missouri, as we did, and behold a mighty
tide of civilization — comfortable and well-furnished dwellings occu-
pied by intelligent, refined and happy people, all the useful industries
of life, with schools, colleges, churches, and every institution of an
advanced social condition — following closely behind the track-layers,
and, in some instances, going ahead of them, causing the music of
busy life to be heard on those beautiful prairies, where only yester-
day silence and solitude reigned, save only as they were broken by
THE MARCH OF EMPIRE. 85

the cry of the savage or the wolf, or the impetuous rush of herds of
buffaloes, and he will have some conception of what is now meant by
the March of Empire.

We have traced the line of this great continental thoroughfare from
the Missouri to the shores of the Pacific,— or, to use the grand language
of the Bible, which, in this connection, has a distinctness and signifi-
cance which are absolutely startling —“ from the river to the ends
of the earth.” We have reached that ocean on the one shore of which
the most ancient of earth’s populations are found, while the most
recent are found on the other,—that point on the earth’s surface
where days end and new days begin. We have seen its effects as far
as it has gone; and, from the strong attractions of the remainder of
the way, we may confidently expect that its progress entirely across
the continent will be followed by similar results — that a strong tide
of population will instantly follow it, carrying with it all the forces
and blessings of a high civilization.

But its effects will not be confined to Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico,
Arizona and California. A new and better life will flow through this
channel into Mexico; and, without violence to either the persons or
the institutions of that distracted country, it will be subdued, and
added, if not politically, at least socially and commercially, to our own
empire. Nothing can prevent it; for the Northern States of that
country, especially Chihuahua and Sonora, with their rich pastures,
their fertile valleys, and their numerous mines of the precious metals,
lie near to the line, and will be connected by branches wherever they
can be made available. A branch road will probably reach Guaymas
before the main line can possibly be carried to San Francisco. This
will give us the first and nearest Pacific port. But of this I have
already spoken.

My desire, however, in this closing letter, is rather to speak of this
road as a channel of Christian civilization than as an avenue of com-
merce. The course of this civilization, ever since the veil of the Jew-
ish temple was rent in twain, and Jew and Gentile mingled together
under one common banner in the service of one Lord and Master, has
been WESTWARD. It is westward still, and westward, like the sun in
his course, it is destined to continue, until it shall have completed the
circuit of the globe. When contemplated from this point of view, the
enterprise of which we speak assumes an importance and grandeur
beyond what the mind is able fully to grasp. The thought that we
are opening a channel through which new light, new life, a better
civilization, and the Gospel of Peace, shall flow to hundreds of millions
of human beings, ought to inspire every heart and nerve every arm
in aid of the great work.
86 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

The remark was made by one of our excursionists, that eight hun-
dred millions of our race were interested in this enterprise; anda
little calm discussion satisfied those who heard it that the assertion
was not extravagant. Its effect will be quietly but surely to revolu-
tionize China and Japan; Russia, at the remotest and most torpid
extremity of her vast domain, will receive a new and better life; it
will restore Mexico to order and civilization; it will greatly affect all
Western Europe ; and certainly our own people are deeply interested in
it. In fact, the entire northern hemisphere, from the equator to the
frozen zone, will feel the effect of this new avenue of commerce, this
new highway over which Empire is to march.

“Subdue it,” said the Almighty, when he placed man upon the earth.
Subdue what? The earth, certainly; but instead of doing so to any
effective extent, men turned their hands against their fellows, and put
forth their mightiest energies to subdue each other. The feeble powers
of isolated individuals were engaged in the one work; the combined
energies of tribes and nations and empires were enlisted in the other;
and the miserable record of the latter makes up the staple of nearly
all ancient and much of modern history. Now, thank Gop, we have
found a more excellent way. Now our nation sends forth armies, not
to butcher their fellow-men, but to subdue the earth — to remove ob-
structions which lie in the way of the universal brotherhood of man—
to clear away the barriers that obstruct our progress —to prepare
highways over which the Prince of Peace may go in his own appointed
way to bless the nations. And there is something impressive in the
fact that this greatest of all national efforts is put forth just as the
most formidable barriers to human progress to be found on the globe
—the Rocky Mountains and the systems of mountains beyond — were
reached by the advancing tide of humanity westward.

The feeble hands of private and individual men could subdue the
forests of our Atlantic border, and they did it; but when they came to
what lay beyond the Missouri, and the ever-reverberating command
was heard, “Subdue it,” a whole nation stood ready to yield obedience
to the mandate and execute the work.

SHEeRMAn’s “ March to the Sea,” although he necessarily marked his
track with devastation and blood, was glorious; and men and women
will speak of it and sing of it for a long time to come; but the time is
coming when PrErry’s March to another Sea, strewing his pathway
with blessings and benefits, will claim and receive tributes of eloquence
and song loftier and more enduring. The victories of War —some-
times a sad necessity —are always exhausting, always shrouded in sad-
ness and tears; while those of Peace, however expensive, are always ©
profitable, making rich those who achieve them, and adding no sorrow.
LATER FACTS AND DEVEL OPMENTS.

 

Raton Mountain Coan Mines. — General
Wu. J. Paumer, one of the ablest and most
energetic officers of the Union Pacific Rail-
way Company, E. D., is now (Sept., 1867) on
a tour of reconnoissance and observation in
the country between the valley of the Smoky
Hill and the Rio Grande. He finds that as
regards routes there is no difficulty, as the
road can be run either through or around the
Raton mountain. In a letter from Fort Union,
in New Mexico, he speaks of the vast deposits
of coal found on that range and in the region
adjacent, and of the agricultural and pastoral
character of that country. We have only room
for a brief extract. He says:

“Dr. Le Conte has just arrived from his
examination of the coal-field, and his report
is very satisfactory. There is abundance of
good coal — very good coal— on both sides of
the Raton mountain, which can be readily
reached from the railroad line. On this side
of the mountain the coal extends to within
thirty miles of this place, and probably farther.
Here, then, is the great natural depot of fuel,

not only for this Pacific Railway, but for the
country contiguous to it for at least as far east
as Fort Harker, and as far west as — well, that
depends upon,further explorations.

“The country in and contiguous to the
Raton mountain is the finest grazing country
Ihave ever seen. I don’t think it ean be ex-
celled; and on this side the ground is very
fertile, and with very little labor fine crops of
wheat, corn, oats and other grains are grown.”

General Palmer, in a letter of a still later
_ date, speaks of the anthracite coal mines of
New Mexico, which, as I have already stated,
(page 69,) are located but a comparatively
short distance from this line of road. He was
about to visit them,

There seems to be some degree of corre-
spondence beween the coal formations of New
Mexico and those of Pennsylvania. On the
slopes of the mountains, their foot-hills and
declining plains, bituminous coal in great
abundance is found, ag in Western Pennsyl-
vania; while more in the heart of the moun-
tain system, as in Central Pennsylvania, the
anthracite variety is found. It is very prob-
able that the bituminous variety is little, if
any, less in quantity in New Mexico than in
Western Pennsylvania; but as to the quantity
of the anthracite, the explorations and re-
searches have not been sufficiently extended
to warrant any comparative estimate.

But from the fact that coal abounds in the
line between Pond Creek and Denver, and on
and around the Raton Mountain, we may
safely conclude that it is confined to no nar-
row locality; but is found, as in Western
Pennsylvania, in many distinct and widely
separated localities, in deposits of from five to
fifty miles in extent, and in veins of from a
few inches to ten and even fifteen feet in
thickness. These coal beds, as in Western
Pennsylvania, lie in nearly horizontal strata.

But for any practical utility to the country,
these rich mines might as well be in the moon
as where they are, until a railway shall be
constructed through that country by which
their products can be carried both east and
west — to the rich agricultural region in one
direction, and to the rich mineral regions in
the other. Without a railroad, they are sim-
ply worthless; but with one, they will be a
source of incalculable national wealth, and
will contribute largely to the success of this
great railroad enterprise.

ANALYSIS oF Raton Mountain Coan.
PHILADELPHIA, August 5, 1867.
To the Union Pacific Railway Co., E. D.:

"The sample of coal from Raton Mountain
yields on analysis as follows:

Moisture, at 212° Fahrenheit, 4.74

 

Sulphur, . , ' -16

Volatile matter, . - 87.20

Fixed carbon, . « 53.90

Ash, . . . : P 4.00
100.00

The above analysis shows a yield at the
rate of 437.6 lbs. of illuminating gas per ton
of 2000 lbs., which is equivalent to 7439.2
cubic feet. You will see from the above that
your coal compares very favorably with any
of those regarded as the best for steam-gener-
ating purposes, and with the majority of those
used for the manufacture of illuminating gas.

Wiuurams & Moss,
Analytical and Consulting Chemists.

Coat ON THE Paciric Stopr. — Mr. W. M.
Gabb, in a report made to J. Ross Brown,
Esq., remarks: “The great coal-bearing for-
mations of the world, those from which the
coals of Perinsylvania and the Mississippi
Valley are obtained, are not represented on
the Pacific Slope of the North American con-
tinent.” He, however, mentions several mines
of coal of inferior quality on that slope, one
on Mount Diablo, in Southern California, a
part of the Coast Range, of which he says:
“ There is here at least one bed of coal of con-
siderable size, but very poor quality and vari-
able thickness. Furthermore, it is so broken
and twisted by the disturbing forces to which
the rocks of the vicinity have been subjected,
that, even were the coal good in quality, the
vein could not be relied on.”

Minera WEALTH oF SouTHERN CALIFOR-
nra.— On this subject I beg leave to refer the
reader to the Report of J. Ross Brown, Esq.,
upon the Mineral Resources of the States and
Territories west of the Rocky Mountains, re-
cently published by authority of Congress,
especially copper, (page 138 et seg.,) and
quicksilver, (page 170 et seq.)

Copper Mines 1x Anrizona.—J. Ross
Brown, Esq., in his Report to the Secretary
of the Treasury, upon the Mineral Resources
of the States and Territories west of the
Rocky Mountains, recently published, says:

(87)
“There are undoubted proofs of the exist-
ence of exceedingly valuable copper mines in
this Territory at various points convenient to
the navigable waters of the Colorado and its
tributaries. Mr. Pompelly, a scientific geolo-
gist and mineralogist, who subsequently was
appointed mineralogist to the Japanese Gov-
ernment, made an extended examination of
the mineral resources of Arizona, and in the
published report of his observations he refers
particularly to the extraordinary richness and
extent of the copper resources of the Terri-
tory. Other parties, who have travelled ex-
tensively through it since Mr. Pompelly, fully
corroborate all that gentleman reported on
this subject. Important mines have been dis-
covered, and districts organized at many
points in the Territory, among which are the
Irataba district, about twenty-five miles south-
west from Fort Mohave; the Freeman district,
about sixty miles south of Williams’ Fork;
the Chimewawa district, on the west bank of
the Colorado, nearly opposite La Paz; the
Salaza district, about thirty-five miles north-
east of La Paz, and the Castle Dome district,
about thirty miles north of the Gila. The for-
mations in which the copper is found in this
Territory are altogether different from those
in which it is found in Oregon and California.
The ores themselves are also quite distinct,
and far more valuable than those found in
those States.”

Mr. Brown, speaking of the copper dis-
trict in the valley of the Williams river, says:
“The Mineral Hill Company have run a tun-
nel on their mine for the length of 350 feet,
out of which, while cutting, they took nearly
1000 tons of ore of an average of 30 per cent.,
the whole work from the surface being in a

 

body of ore. The ore in none of the mines in
the district is found in a regular lode, as in
the mines in California, but the whole country
appears to be formed of iron and copper.”
The copper exists in the form of heavy masses
of ore embedded in large quantities of powdery
oxide of iron. Sometimes, when these heavy
masses are removed, this dry powder comes
rushing down to the amount of hundreds of
tons. Some of the copper ore found in this
locality is quite rich in gold.

When the rich and exhaustless coal mines
of the Raton Mountain shall be connected
with these Arizona mines by the Union Pacifie
Railway, then, and not before, will the bound-
less wealth of that Territory be made avail-
able.

Exurpit of the Earnings and Expenses of
the Union Pacific Railway, E. D., for the
month of July, 1867.

To amount of Harnings, viz.:
Government Freight, . $47,667 24
“ Troops, 13,874 60
“ Mails, 8,003 62

Total Government, . - $64,545 46
Merchandise and Passenger traftic, 125,025 13

. 189,570 59
«» 104,430 77

 

Total Earnings, . .
By Working Expenses, .

85,139 82

 

Net Proceeds, . : :

The gross earnings for the month of August
were $236,000.

For Government transportation, $80,000

Freight and Passengers, . .

156,000

 

aCe
TON

 

 

Of every description built at the shortest notice.

Capacity of the Works from two to five cars per day, according to specifications.

CHARLES BILLMEYER.

DAVID E. SMALL.

88
    

 

  
      

 

 

 

        
   
   
  

 

 
      
  
    
  
  
 
  
 
   
 
     

 
 
 
   

 
 
 

 
  
   

 

 

 

 
 
          
  

  
   
 

 

 
 
   
 

 
  

        
   
       

   
     
      

  
 
 
  
  
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

        
 
 

      
     
   
   
 
 
  
   
 
  

   

 

     
   
    
 
   
 
  
    

      

 
 
  

     

  

    

 

  
  
  
 
    

    

 

 

 
       

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

 

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