I.
FROM NEW YORK TO KANSAS.
ATCHISON, Kansas, _May 15, 1859_.
I left New York by Erie Railroad on Monday evening, 9th inst., just as
our fortnight of bright, hot, planting weather was closing. Two hours
later, the gathered clouds burst upon us in a rain which continued
through the night, though the city was not refreshed by it till some
hours later. We had glimpses of sunshine as we skirted the southern
shore of Lake Erie on Wednesday, and some more after a heavy shower at
Chicago on Thursday; beside these, cloudy skies, easterly winds, and
occasional rain, have been my portion since I bade adieu to the hot,
dusty streets of New York. But it is breaking away as I write, and I
hope to see Kansas, for the first time, under skies which image her
sunny future rather than her stormy past.
Coming up the Erie Road, I tried a “sleeping-car” for the third time,
and not very successfully. We all “retired” at ten o’clock, with a fair
allowance of open windows and virtuous resolutions; but the rain poured,
the night was chill and damp; and soon every orifice for the admission
of external air, save the two or three humbug ventilators overhead, was
shut, and a mephitic atmosphere produced, in which the soul of John G.
Saxe might have disported and fancied it elysium. After gasping a while,
like a netted fish on a hot sandbank, I rose to enter my solemn protest
against all sleeping-cars not provided with abundant and indefeasible
means of ventilation. I tried one, two nights later, on the Michigan
Southern Road, which served much better, though still far from perfect.
It is very true that no arrangement can secure a healthy circulation of
air by night in any passenger-car, while the popular ignorance is so
dense that the great majority imagine any atmosphere healthful which is
neither too cold nor too hot, and rather laugh at the wit than pity the
blindness of Saxe in holding up to ridicule a woman who knows (and does)
better than to sit all night in a close car, with thirty or forty other
human beings, all breathing an atmosphere which they, in twenty minutes,
render absolutely poisonous; but the builders of cars have no right to
be ignorant of the laws of life with which they tamper; and two or three
presentments by Grand Juries of the makers of unventilated cars,
especially sleeping-cars, as guilty of manslaughter, would exert a most
salutary influence. I commend this public duty to the immediate
consideration of jurors and prosecutors.
Stopping at Hornellsville, at seven next morning, I took the train for
Buffalo thence at noon, and halted at Castile, to fulfill an engagement
to speak at Pike, formerly in Alleghany, now in Wyoming County.
I left Pike for Castile at five on Wednesday morning; took the cars to
Buffalo at half past seven; was in ample season for the Lake Shore train
at ten; ran into Cleveland a little after five; left at six for Toledo,
where we changed cars between ten and eleven, and were in Chicago at
seven next morning as aforesaid. Along the south shore of Lake Erie, as
in our own state, it was plain that the area plowed on or before the
11th of May was greater this year than ever before. And well it might
be; for the country was hardly ever so bare of food for man and beast as
in this same May of 1859. Flour is higher and wheat and corn scarcely
lower in Chicago than in New York or Liverpool; oats nearly the same.
Thousands of cattle, throughout the Prairie States, have died of
starvation this spring, though prairie-hay might almost anywhere have
been put up last fall at a cost of less than two dollars per ton;
Minnesota, with, perhaps, the best soil for winter wheat in America, is
buying flour in Chicago by the thousand barrels; and I hear from
different sections of this great granary of nations—from Illinois, from
Iowa, from Missouri—of whole neighborhoods destitute alike of bread and
of the wherewithal to buy it. Unpropitious as last season was, it does
not fully explain this scarcity, especially of fodder. I trust the like
will never occur to need explanation again.
Coming down through Illinois from Chicago south-westwardly to Quincy
(268 miles) it was gratifying to see how general are the effort and
obvious resolve to look starvation out of countenance this year. Though
the breadth of winter wheat was but moderate, owing to the incessant
rains of last autumn, it is plain that the farmers began to plow and sow
as early as possible this spring; putting in, first, spring wheat, then
oats, latterly corn; and they mean to keep putting in corn and oats for
a month yet. If Illinois and Iowa do not grow far more grain this year
than ever before, it will hardly be the fault of the cultivators, for
they are bent on doing their utmost. Considering their bad fortune last
year, this resolute industry does them credit; but they are generally in
debt, out of money and almost out of credit, and are making a final
stand against the sheriff. I heartily wish them a good deliverance.
And, despite the hard times, Illinois is growing. There are new blocks
in her cities, new dwellings in her every village, new breakings on this
or that edge of almost every prairie. The short, young grass is being
cropped by large herds of cattle, whose improved appearance within the
last fortnight is said by those who have observed them from day to day
to be beyond credence on any testimony but that of eye-sight. Here,
every horse or ox that can pull is hitched to a plow or harrow whenever
darkness or rain does not forbid; and, by plowing the dryest ridges
first and seeding them; then taking the next dryest and serving them
just so, nearly every cultivator can keep putting in seed at least four
days per week from March till June. Many will plant corn this year till
the middle of June, and even later, unless compelled sooner to desist in
order to commence cultivating that first planted. Then cultivating will
require every hour till harvesting begins; and this (including haying)
will last till it is full time to plow for winter wheat. No busier
season was ever seen than this is to be; from the Hudson to the
Mississippi, you see four horses or oxen at work to one in pasture; and
there are thousands of farmers who would plant or sow a quarter more, if
they had grain to feed their teams, than they will now be able to do.
There are few traveling in the cars, few idling about stores or taverns,
but many in the fields. May a bounteous Heaven smile on their labors!
Illinois is just beginning to be cultivated. I presume she has no
railroad along which half the land within a mile has ever been touched
by a plow. Back from the roads, there is of course still less
cultivation; probably less than a tenth of her soil has ever yet been
broken. Possibly one-fourth of her spontaneous product of grass may now
be eaten by animals that contribute to the sustenance or comfort of man,
though I think one-sixth would be nearer the mark. She has far more coal
than Great Britain—I believe more than any other state—but has hardly
yet begun to mine it. Her timber is not so excellent; she lacks pine and
all the evergreens, but she is bountifully and cheaply supplied with
these from Michigan and Wisconsin. Boards are sent through her canal
from Chicago to the Illinois, and thence around by St. Louis and up the
Missouri to build houses in Kansas and Nebraska. Her timber, such as it
is, palpably increases from year to year, and will increase still more
rapidly as roads and plowing check the sweep of prairie-fires. If her
prairies were more rolling, they would be dryer and could be worked
earlier; but then they would wash more, and probably have less depth and
richness of soil. Doubtless, the child is born who will see her a state
of ten millions of people, one million of them inhabiting her commercial
emporium.
I stopped over night at Quincy, and took the steamboat Pike at half past
seven next morning for Hannibal, twenty miles below. I had repeatedly
crossed the Mississippi, but this was my first passage on it. The river
is very high, so that its banks are submerged, and the water flows under
the trees which line either shore. Islets covered with trees and
shrubbery abound; the bluffs recede some miles on either hand, and are
softened to the view by the deep green of the young foliage; hardly a
clearing breaks the uniformity of the almost tropical prospect; though
here and there a miserable little hut in the last stages of decay tells
where a chopper of steamboat-wood held on until whisky or the ague took
him off. In flood, as it is, the river is turbid, not muddy, and pursues
its course with a deliberation and gravity befitting the majestic Father
of Waters, to whom, with head bare and reverent spirit, I wave a
respectful adieu.
For our good boat has reached Hannibal, the first point below Quincy at
which the Missouri bluff approaches the river, and whence the valley of
a streamlet makes up through the hills to the broad, level prairie.
Hannibal is pleasantly situated on the intervale of the creek and up the
side of the bluff, so as to be entirely commanded by a steamboat passing
up the river. It is a bustling, growing village of some four thousand
inhabitants, which the new “Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad” has
suddenly raised from local to general importance. Like most villages on
the great western rivers it has no wharf, and the river is now
threatening to eat away a part of the bank on which railroad and
steamboat freight is heaped in wild disorder. Its new consequence must
soon work a change. I look for a wharf and a great storehouse when I
next land or embark here.
The Pike rounded to, and sent us ashore; the train backed down to within
forty feet of her; the passengers got aboard the cars and were followed
by their baggage, and in half an hour we were steaming up through the
woody ravine to emerge on one of the largest prairies on northern
Missouri. Across this—or, rather, along it—we took our course westward,
almost as the crow flies, to St. Joseph on the Missouri, two hundred and
six miles distant, which we reached in a little more than twelve hours,
or at half past ten last evening. The road was completed in hot haste
last winter, in order to profit by the “Pike’s Peak” migration this
spring; no gravel is found on its line, unless in the immediate vicinity
of the Mississippi; and it was raining pitilessly for the second day
nearly throughout, so that the roadbed was a causeway of mortar or ooze,
into which the passing trains pressed the ties, first on one side, then
on the other, making the track as bad as track could well be. A year
hence, it must be better, even with the frost just coming out of the
ground; after a dry week, it will probably be quite fair; but yesterday
it afforded more exercise to the mile than any other railroad I ever
traveled. About one-third of the way from Hannibal, it is intersected by
the “North Missouri Railroad” from St. Louis, which city is about one
hundred miles further from St. Joseph than Hannibal is; the train from
St. Louis starting at five A. M. to connect with ours which ought to
have left Hannibal at half past nine. Each road is completed, so that
St. Louis as well as Hannibal is within a day’s ride by rail of St.
Joseph, which faces Kansas almost up to the Nebraska line.
Though the day was dreary, I noted with deep interest the country
through which we passed, which disappointed me in these respects: 1. The
land is better than I had supposed; 2. It is of more uniform
grade—hardly anything worth calling a hill being seen after rising the
bluff from the Mississippi till we come in sight of the bluffs which
enclose the Missouri; 3. There is more prairie and less timber than I
had expected; and 4. There are infinitely less population and
improvement. Of course, this road was run so as to avoid the more
settled districts, and thus to secure a larger allotment of the public
lands whereof the alternate sections for a width of five or six miles
were granted to the state in aid of its construction; but I had not
believed it possible to run a railroad through northern Missouri so as
to strike so few settlements. Palmyra, near the Mississippi, and
Chillicothe, a hundred miles further west, are county seats and villages
of perhaps two hundred dwellings each; beside these, there is no village
of any size, unless it be one of those we passed in rain and darkness as
we neared the Missouri. For some fifty miles after passing Palmyra, we
traversed a level prairie, admirably grassed, but scarcely broken, save
where the needs of the railroad had called up two to half a dozen petty
buildings. Yet, for most of the way, timber was in sight on one side or
on both, often within a mile; and the soil, though but a thin, black
mold resting on a heavy clay, therefore not so well adapted to grain as
prairie soils are apt to be, is admirably fitted for stock-growing. It
seems incredible that such land, in a state forty years old, could have
remained unsettled till now. We traversed other prairies, five to twenty
miles long, separated by the richest intervales skirting Grand River and
sundry smaller streams, well timbered with elm, hickory, etc. Interposed
between the prairies are miles on miles of gently rolling ridges, thinly
covered with white-oak, and forming “oak openings” or “timbered
openings,” while a thick growth of young wood, now that the annual fires
are somewhat checked by roads and cultivation, is coming forward under
the full-grown oaks, the whole forming one of the most beautiful and
inviting regions I ever passed over. They tell me that the rolling
prairies near St. Joseph, to which we passed after dark, are richer and
finer than those I saw; but they surely need not be. With such soil and
timber, the Mississippi on one side, the Missouri on the other, and a
railroad connecting them, it must be that northern Missouri is destined
to increase its population speedily and rapidly. I am sure beef can be
made there at less cost per pound than in any other locality I ever
visited.
St. Joseph is a busy, growing town of some ten thousand, inhabitants. It
is beautifully situated on a bend of the Missouri, partly on its
intervale (which the river is gouging out and carrying away), and partly
on the southward slope of the bluff, which rises directly from the river
bank, at the north end of the town. Other towns on the Missouri may have
a grander future; I doubt that any has a finer location. The river bank
must be piled or docked, or in some way fortified against the boiling
current which sets against the town-site with fearful power and effect.
I believe this is further west than any other point reached by a
railroad connecting eastward with the Atlantic ports. At all events, the
travel and part of the trade of the vast wilderness watered by the Upper
Missouri and its tributaries, seem to center here. At the City Hotel,
where I stopped, some of the guests were of, and from Salt Lake; one, an
Indian trader from the head waters of the Columbia, who came down the
Yellow Stone from the Rocky Mountains last fall in a canoe, and is now
returning. Army officers and sutlers for the forts far up the Missouri
and its tributaries, are constantly arriving and departing. I may never
see St. Joseph again, but she will long be to me a pleasant
recollection. Elwood, in Kansas, opposite, is a small place, which must
grow with the country behind her. The mighty, boiling flood, which is
tearing away the soil of St. Joseph, is piling up new bars and banks in
front of, and just below Elwood, rendering approach to her wharf (if
wharf she has or should have) difficult for river steamboats, and thus
shutting her out from the upriver trade.
I took passage from St. Joseph for this place at eight this morning on
the good steamer Platte Valley, Captain Coursey, and defied the chill
east wind, and damp, cold atmosphere, to take my first lesson in
Missouri navigation. The distance by water is some forty miles; by land
considerably less; the river being here, as everywhere, crooked and
capricious. I regretted to note that it tends, if unchecked, to grow
worse and worse; the swift current rapidly forming a bank below every
projecting point, and thus setting the stream with everincreasing force
against the yielding, crumbling mold or silt of the intervale which
forms the opposite shore, which is thus rapidly undermined and falls in,
to be mingled with and borne away by the resistless flood. The banks are
almost always nearly perpendicular, and are seldom more than two or
three feet above the surface of the water at its present high stage, so
that the work of devastation is constantly going on. The river is at
once deep, swift, and generally narrow—hardly so wide in the average as
the Hudson below Albany, though carrying the water of thirty Hudsons. It
cannot be half a mile wide opposite this city. Its muddiness is beyond
all description; its color and consistency are those of thick milk
porridge; you could not discern an egg in a glass of it. A fly floating
in a teacup of this dubious fluid an eighth of an inch below the surface
would be quite invisible. With its usually bold bluffs, two or three
hundred feet high, now opposing a rocky barrier to its sweep, now
receding to a distance of two or three miles, giving place to an
intervale, many feet deep, of the richest mold; usually covered by a
thrifty growth of elm, cotton-wood, etc., its deep, rapid, boiling,
eddying current, its drifting logs and trees, often torn from its banks
by its floods, and sometimes planted afresh in its bed, so that the tops
rise angularly to a point just below or just above the surface of the
water, forming the sawyer or snag so justly dreaded by steamboats, the
Missouri stands alone among the rivers of the earth, unless China can
show its fellow.