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Show THE HAWKEYES. 23 careful census by the city authorities made the population 19,000. The next year they modestly estimated it in round numbers at 25,000; and the next came a great epidemic ( of United States officials) and swept oft' half the number, for the United States census of 1870 credits Omaha with less than 13,000 inhabitants. The city is cosmopolitan. First Street is located in the river ( at high water), and the first seven streets are supposed to be on the sandbar. The city begins at Eighth Street, and the location of the fashionables is from Eighteenth to Twenty- fifth Streets, on Capitol Hill. Such are the pleasing self- delu-sions of the expanding mind in the glorious free and boundless West. It was the notable hot season in Nebraska, and a week in the metrop-olis satisfied me. Thence I sought the country by way of the old Cali-fornia trail, and traveled a month in rural Nebraska first in the valley of the Papilion ( which the people persist in calling Pappeo), and thence to Fontanelle and up the Elkhorn through what is considered the gar-den spot of Northern Nebraska. It is a region rich in natural wealth, and was even then so handsomely improved that travel through it was a constant delight. There were miles of corn- fields, with heavy crops, and tracts of wheat just ready for harvesting, farm products of all kinds in abundance, and plenty blessing the industrious farmer. Planted timber of nearly all kinds grows rapidly, cottonwood and locust es-pecially; nearly every settler has an artificial grove, and these are abundant enough to greatly beautify the landscape. The soil is deep and rich, the country gently rolling, high, dry and healthful. The wheat through that region averaged twenty- five bushels per acre that year. For the width of the State north and south, and a hundred and fifty miles back from the Missouri, almost every acre is adapted for the production of grain. Thirty thousand square miles of land give abun-dant room for an agricultural population of a million. West of the area I have thus bounded, the land rises more into the barren ridges; only the valleys are very fertile, and most of the country is valuable only for grazing. Society is well organized; churches and schools have been handsomely provided for; vacant land in the fertile section is still abundant and cheap, and if one is native to any latitude north of 36, Nebraska offers him first- class inducements. The Indian still lingered. The Pawnees were the local aborigines, but Omahas ( properly Mahaws) and Otoes were common, all three be-ing among the most unprepossessing of the race. Long observation has convinced me that those tribes which fringe the white settle-ments, hanging between civilization and barbarism, always include the meanest looking specimens. Of course, I except the civilized res- |
