ACROSS THE MISSOURI.
Cyclones are getting to be so common in this Western country that the
people are endeavoring to guard against them as they do against fire,
but with this difference: they do not try to protect their property
against the cyclone; it is useless; they simply wish to save their
lives, that is all. Insurance on property against loss by wind is
now customary all over the country, but if these cyclones increase in
frequency as they have in the past few years, it is only a question
of time when life insurance companies will consider it an extra risk
to live in this Western country. I experienced a feeling of nearness
to the cyclone that was sufficient when I read the accounts of the
terrible destruction of life and property in Ohio a few weeks ago,
for I had a delightful journey only a few days before through some of
the towns that were so soon afterwards swept away in a twinkling. But
my stay in Grinnell, of a couple of weeks, was like living on an
old battle-field. The dead, of course, have gone from sight, but the
wounded are to be seen on all sides. I went out calling and met an
old lady still suffering from an injury received four years ago. I
saw another go limping by and heard she had a hip broken at the same
time, and, while riding, I met a lady whose head was so crushed during
that terrible storm that she now has frequent spells of insanity. I
began to wonder if any one in Grinnell had escaped uninjured. Let the
clouds even now gather, black and threatening, and the people live
the awful experience of that night over again. The streets are soon
filled with women and children, carrying what few valuables they can,
all hurrying to some cave for safety. I crawled into one of these
caves one day. It was in the cellar of a fine residence, and is a room
not larger than six by eight feet, and not over four feet high, with
strong brick walls on the sides and heavy timbers overhead, and amply
ventilated, and into this small hole, not long ago, twenty-four women
and children huddled for two or three hours one night, some praying,
others crying, and all suffering from mortal fear as long as the storm
lasted. Almost every house in Grinnell that has a cellar has a cave of
some kind in it, a room boarded up and covered over thick with earth
to protect the occupants from falling bricks and timbers. Not only
here but all through the West a cave is now considered an essential
part to every dwelling. But think of the mental suffering the people
of these Western States endure whenever there is a severe storm or even
indications of one. If those Eastern people could see the photographic
views that I have seen of the destruction wrought by a Western cyclone,
they would never assign, as a cause of their complete demolition, the
flimsy manner in which the houses are built. If they could have seen
the two college buildings, one built of stone, the other of brick,
each as large and as solidly built as any Eastern edifice, if they
could have seen these two buildings demolished and crushed like so
many eggshells--in less than two minutes--what would they think of
the superior safety of our Eastern houses? How many frame houses
would stand such a blow? Everything was as calm and still as death
that terrible night when, without any premonitory roar or warning,
the cyclone struck the town like the report of a cannon, and in less
than five minutes it had finished its work, ending it as easily with
the two college buildings as it commenced it with the small frame
houses. Although it was early in the evening, fifty-eight persons were
instantly killed and many more wounded; but let it come again, day or
night, it will never catch Grinnell people unawares. They watch the
clouds to this day, as they would some fell demon hovering over them,
and the more timid ones early rush to their caves. Many outlandish lies
have been written about the power of the cyclone, but the cold fact,
the bare truth is more wonderful than any stories man can invent. One
only needs to come here and talk with the people about the cyclone to
be convinced that their experience for a few minutes was as terrible
as that of a great battle, and I was as fascinated with their stories
as I ever was talking with old soldiers.
"I should know you were an Easterner from your talk," is a remark I
hear on all sides, and so I have tried to learn what there is about
the talk of a native of New England that distinguishes him from people
west of there. It is not because he speaks so flat, for through New
York every one spoke more so than I could. I pronounced the town
of Fonda just as it is spelled, and yet every one there called it
"Fundy." Utica was "Utiky," Lima was "Limy," and everything else
was pronounced in the same flat manner. I supposed this to be a
peculiarity of New Englanders, but New Yorkers rather excel in that
style of speech. Out here in Iowa, where friends have an unflinching
frankness quite remarkable, they tell me whenever I say anything
particularly flat my nose flies up into the air to emphasize it. That
may be a trait peculiar to myself, but it is some comfort to know
that people outside of New England have lingual peculiarities as
marked as those coming from the Eastern States. In Ohio and Indiana
I met a great many persons who never pronounce the personal pronoun
"I" as we do. It is always "Ah" instead of "I." "Ah thought so,"
"Ah heard so." I supposed that was more Southern than Western; but
if so, many of Southern birth are now living in these States. The
farther West I go the more I notice the way they roll their R's. That
letter is brought out with a peculiar force in every word in which it
occurs. Here, there, however, harvest, horses, father, mother, and
all such words are spoken as if there were two or three r's in them
instead of one. Whenever they accost me it is "O, George," while in
the East it would be, "Say, George." Then two short grunts are very
often used out here instead of yes or no. Emphasize the first grunt
and it means no; emphasize the second, with a slightly rising accent,
and it means yes. This is a common form of expression, with colored
people everywhere, I think, but here, with white children, it is the
most common way of saying yes or no, and many older persons use it.
They have no brooks or streams here, but everything is called a
"crick," pronounced very short, too. That name is applied sometimes
to good-sized rivers. These peculiarities of speech do not seem to
be acquired by persons living here, who were born and brought up in
the East, but their children acquire them readily, and everywhere
on the trip, going and coming, I noticed these peculiarities more
in the talk of the women and children than in the men. I could only
account for this from the fact that men go out into the world more
and come in contact and consequently talk more with persons using
fewer provincialisms.
The students at the Iowa College in Grinnell had a field-day while
I was there, and during the games and races I could but notice
the striking difference between the features of these students and
those of Eastern young men. These Iowa boys have heads large and well
shaped enough, but their features are disproportionately large. Their
eyebrows are large and overhanging, their cheek bones are prominent,
their noses are heavy, mouths large, and under jaw bones strong
and marked. There is nothing brutal or exactly coarse about their
faces, but everything about them is large and heavy. I hardly saw a
small-featured, clean-cut, really refined face among the one hundred
and fifty young men.
The attendance at church in Grinnell is larger in proportion than in
any place in the East, probably. With a population of 3,500 the regular
attendance at the Congregational Church alone is eight or nine hundred.
When I left Grinnell, two members of their bicycle club, Messrs. Lee
Taylor and Geo. Lewis, accompanied me for twenty miles or more, and
although I was very glad of their company, the frequent tumbles they
took coasting, made me sorry they had undertaken the ride, with the
thermometer up in the nineties.
Iowa roads are decidedly better than those through Illinois. Although
there is the same system of repairing the highways in both States--the
ancient system of farmers working out their road tax where they
choose--yet Iowa farmers not only scrape their roads, but in many
places they were laying tiles along up the worst hills in order that
the roads might be drained in the spring. I saw more work done on
the roads the first afternoon in Iowa than I saw the whole week in
Illinois. And there is another thing to be said in favor of these
Western clay roads, roads that for hundreds of miles have been as
rough as any cobble street in a New England city (it is simply just
to give the devil his due), a rider can go within half an inch of
a clay rut and yet his wheel will not slide down into the rut. This
has saved me many a tumble.
Another thing: during dry spells, such as we are having throughout the
West now, the dust gets very fine but never very deep. The clay is so
tough it does not get cut up as much as our Eastern roads do during
a drought. But the coasting in Iowa, of which I expected so much, for
the country is a rolling prairie, was simply dangerous. The hills are
so full of hard hummocks, "dive holes" the wheelmen here call them,
that it shakes a fellow up terribly. Once I went off, going down a
steep hill at such a rate that my hands and knees struck the ground
simultaneously, and the knapsack tunked me on the back of the head
at about the same time, as if to remind me of man's fallen estate.
In almost every Western State the towns are just six miles square and
the roads cross each other at right angles at intervals of one mile;
consequently in traveling across the country diagonally, as I have
most of the time, it was necessary to travel much farther than if
the roads had been left as they were before the towns and counties
were laid out. Through Iowa the old stage road followed the "divide"
(what we call a ridge in the East) in many places, but when the towns
were laid out the road was made straight across the country, up and
down some very steep hills, in the western part of the State. The
log barns, pig pens, and corn cribs, so common in Ohio and Indiana,
disappear almost entirely in Illinois and Iowa, and instead appear
thatched barns and sheds. Poles are set in the ground and a cheap
frame fastened to them, the sides are perhaps covered with rough
sheathing boards and the roof thatched with hay; that constitutes
the most common barn to be seen in this part of the West. It is no
wonder so many cattle perish here during the severe winters. Heavy
timber is very scarce, which accounts for the lack of log cabins and
other log buildings.
Speaking about timber reminds me that they have no woods out here. They
always say "when you get through the timber" instead of when you
get through the woods. They don't have any swamps here either, they
are all "sloughs," pronounced "slews." When the Rock Island road was
first built it was a common sight on looking out of the car window
to see seams of coal near the surface in the cuts through which the
railroad ran. Now there are many farmers in Iowa who can go out and
dig up enough coal in a few minutes to last all day in their stoves.
Since I left Connecticut I have hardly seen a clear stream of
water. The Croton and Hudson Rivers were both very roily from the
heavy spring rains, and farther West the streams are muddy the year
round. Many times I have longed to strip and take a bath, but the
water was unfit for anything but hog wallows. I wonder if the black
soil and the consequently black muddy waters of these Western States
has had anything to do with the color of the hair on the hogs. A white
hog here in the West is as uncommon as a black hog in the East. When
this country was first settled the hogs were probably brought from
the East, and were white. Would wallowing in the black mud and water
for weeks and months during the hot summer season gradually change
the color of their hair to correspond to that of the soil in which
they spend so much of their time? This question must be left to the
evolutionists, who have explained, to their own satisfaction at least,
so many questions of a like nature.
The cultivation of small fruits in the West has assumed immense
proportions. Strawberries have glutted the markets to such an extent
that the price will hardly pay for the transportation. Five cents a
quart at retail has been the ruling price in many of these Western
cities. Blackberries, raspberries, and other small fruits will also be
very abundant. The extent to which the farm-work is done by machinery
is truly wonderful. The farmer rides while he plows, harrows, and
plants the corn, and the wheat is mostly sown in drills. The expense
of ditching the land has been very great, amounting in some cases to
ten dollars an acre, but now a machine digs the ditch, throws the dirt
one side, lays the tiling and covers it up again. Still later in the
season I shall probably see the wonderful harvesting machines. Fields
of corn containing from a hundred to one hundred and fifty acres are
common, in fact that is about the average crop raised by every farmer
here. But how they work! From 4 in the morning till 8 at night. They
would as soon think of stopping "to do the chores" in the middle of
the afternoon as at 6 o'clock. With all the help from the machinery
and horses, the Western farmer works very hard, much harder than the
New England farmer. And in Iowa he does not seem to be in very good
circumstances. His house is small and in poor repair, and his barns
are poorer still. With corn at 18 cents a bushel, wheat lower than
ever, butter 10 and 12 cents, eggs 8 cents, and all other farmers'
produce at like low figures, it requires immense crops to amount to
much of an income.
The people out here also raise large families of children. Such is
doubtless the case in all newly settled countries, but it is mentioned
as a curious fact that people who have lived childless in the East
for years, move out here, and immediately they are blessed with a
goodly number of healthy boys and girls.
The gilded dome of the capitol at Des Moines can be seen for eight or
ten miles in some directions, but the proportions of the dome are not
so graceful as those of our own in Connecticut. The outside diameter
is over 80 feet, with the inside 66 feet, while the height is 275
feet. The gilded part has a row of circular windows half way up, and
compared with our own the whole dome has a decidedly more "squatty"
appearance. The building is 240 by 360 feet, and inside is finished
very nicely. The staircases, door casings, wainscoting, pillars, and
panels are all or nearly all of genuine marble. In a country where
there are so many public buildings that are decorated inside with
imitations of every kind of marble known, it is quite refreshing to
see so much here that is real. Thirty-two kinds of marble are used
in the building. The house has only 100 members, the senate 50, the
increase in population making no difference in the number of members,
and yet the hall of the house is a very large room, 74 by 91 feet, and
47 feet high, and it is elegantly finished in marble, scagliola, and
black walnut. These pillars of scagliola on the sides of the room are
nearly as large as those at the entrance of our capitol at Hartford,
and are very dark and rich in color. This material can only be used
where there is little weight resting on the pillars for they are made
of plaster of Paris with an iron rod in the middle. This rod is placed
inside of a hollow cylinder, and plaster of Paris, variously colored,
and mixed with glue to prevent its hardening quickly, is packed around
it with occasionally a chunk of white plaster of Paris laid near the
outside of the pillar, when the pillar is taken out of the case, placed
in position and nicely polished, the various colors being brought
out with a most beautiful effect. The senate chamber is finished
in more elegant style, if anything, than the house, but it seemed
a pity to see in such a nicely furnished room, in the rear of the
president's chair, two large panels of a sickly green colored marble,
that were imitations of the real article, and very poor imitations,
too. But the structure taken as a whole is so well constructed, and
so nicely furnished, that it seems almost incredible that the cost
of the whole in its finished state will not be over $3,000,000.
In Western Iowa I encountered frequent steep hills, too steep for
safe coasting; and after rather ungracefully spinning down one of the
steepest, to the astonishment of on-looking pedestrians, I concluded
to take a railroad train to Omaha, which I reached in a few hours,
after completing my 1980th mile on the wheel.