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