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