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