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.

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