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Show 444 WESTERN WILDS. than their Eastern congeners, and given to stimulating decoctions. West of them will come in the bold florid type, with complexion of a rich mahogany, with wiry frame, outline a little too extended, and eyes and hair of the intense hues. This type will come to perfection in Kansas. North of them will be the Western Yankees, with less strictness than their Eastern ancestors, but more acquisitiveness. A little way southward will begin the typical Southerner, with charac-teristics steadily exaggerated as we near the gulf. But in that section will be three races : pure whites, pure blacks, and the " colored." Miscegenation will pretty nearly cease when the late slaves get used to freedom, and the betwixt- and- between colors of the South will settle into a permanent type, without merging on either side into the pure colors. Why not? That happened in Mexico, after two centuries of miscegenation, and the same causes will doubtless produce the same effects here. In the Far West we shall have the mountaineer, of a type totally different from all the others. Any man can see, with half an eye, that nothing but extensive emigration, and the social mixtures resulting therefrom, prevent climatic laws from separating us into dif-ferent races. By and by emigration must cease, and nature work her will upon us. What then ? How can all these diverse races be held together, under one democratic republican government? Ah! that's the conundrum some future generation must solve. At Eldorado we leave the valley and journey over the high and unsettled prairies to Florence, in Marion County. The route takes me again over the " divide " between the Neosho and Arkansas ; but here it is only a high plain without any ve, ry barren ridges as far-ther south. The high land is comparatively unsettled, and only the lower valleys have many cultivated farms. It is evident we are on the border, and pretty near the dry plains ; though the settlers, espe-cially the many real estate agents in the few towns, insist that " there is no such thing as the American Desert it's a myth every section of land in Kansas can be cultivated." Though there are a thousand of them, and but one of me, I venture to differ a very little. At Flor-ence I take the eastward train, and am soon down among the old farms on the rich plains of the Kaw. But before I close my last sketch of Kansas, a few general notes are in order : The State is an immense parallelogram, about twice as long as wide, containing 81,318 square miles: ten times the size of Massachusetts, one- fifth larger than Missouri, a little more than twice the size of Ohio, not quite three times as big as Indiana, and exceeding by one-third the area of England. I divide it into three sections : the east- |
