TOWNS IN KANSAS. 53.

speak from my own observation. I was assured that no better graded
free school was to be found in Boston than here, and certainly they
have a very ample and well-finished school edifice. But a single place
exists in the town where intoxicating drinks are vended, and even
that is likely to be closed. Some time ago a man set up a billiard
table, but it would not pay, and he went off with it. In fact, idleness,
vice, and rowdyism are almost unknown.

There are many good stores in the place, and the principal street
has something of acity aspect. Buildin g8 ale going up rapidly, nearly
all of that beautiful stone of which I spoke in a former letter; and
altogether the place appears to be busy and thriving.

There is a fine water-power at Manhattan. Some three miles above,
by the road, but more than three times that distance by the course of
the stream, there is a considerable fall in the Big Blue — which is a
large, clear, and standing river—at the head of which a substantial
stone dam has been erected. A race of three miles across the level
neck of the peninsula, and down past the base of Blue Mont, will bring
the water to the town, and give a fall, as I was informed, of about
twenty-four feet —enough to propel avery large amount of machinery.
The Kansas itself, I am told, can also be made available for a like

purpose. I see no reason why this may not become an important
manufacturing town.

a eee

LETTER XIII.— Towns in Kansas — Junction City — Solomon City —
Salina — The Neosho Valley — The Seasons in Kansas —A Word to
such as may think of Emigrating.

Sr. Louis, July 8, 1867.
Or the remaining towns in Kansas which I have seen —Junction
City, Solomon City, Salina, and Ellsworth —I have already spoken
pretty freely, and need say but little more. They are all ambitious
little places, and are all the creatures of thisroad. ach is the centre
of a large and fertile district, with which it will grow.

JUNCTION CITY,

situated as it is at the lower end of the fine valley of the Republican
river, and only eighteen or twenty miles from the head of Neosho val-
ley —probably the finest wheat-growing portion of Kansas — with
which the people of that town hope ere long to be connected by rail-
road — has aspirations far beyond those of a mere county seat or the
centre of a good agricultural surrounding.

I was much pleased with the spirit of enterprise everywhere mani-