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. .

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