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Show 132 WESTERN WILDS. a long and beautiful slope, fertility increasing with every mile, into Allen County, the agricultural center of Southern Kansas. Ten days we traveled about in Allen, gathering figures as to climate, crops, and the price of lands all included in a later chapter. This county already contains a population of twelve or fifteen thousand, an enterprising and intelligent people, Iron bridges span the Ne-osho ; the roads are equal to those in the East ; churches and schools abound, and the immigrant finds himself in the center of an organ-ized and progressive commonwealth. There are more intelligent men than new communities can usually boast; music is extensively cultivated, and the common schools are modeled after the plan of those of Massachusetts. Seeing that we were eager for information ( our business was to furnish facts to intending emigrants), the old settlers gave us good measure. In their account there never was so rich, so great, so prosperous a region, never such another chance to make money ; the towns were all certain to make great cities ; lots were sure to double in price in a year; pure fat might run in the furrows, and corn be made to tassle and silk in greenbacks; one's children would grow fat by mere contact with the soil, and his wife resume the beauty of her youth ; roasted shoats, with knife and fork stuck in their backs, would in due time rub against him and beg to be eaten, and such robust health enliven his frame that when he longed for death he must move back East. One resident of Deer Creek, we were assured, had lived so long that life was a burden ( to his heirs, probably). Weary of existence, he moved back to Illinois, and there succeeded in giving up the ghost, having first stipulated that he should be buried on his Kansas farm. But such were the life- giving properties of this soil, that, when laid in it, animation returned to his limbs, his heart resumed its pulsations, and the incorrigible centenarian walked forth, to the disgust of his heirs, and the confusion of those who had doubts about Kansas. Three years after our visit came the notable dry year; seven years of good crops had made them careless, and from 1873 till 1875 some of the people of Southern Kansas actually suffered for the necessaries of life. Will experience make them more provident, or will it con-tinue to be a feast or a famine with them? Continuing our examination of rural Kansas, by successive stages southward, we passed next into Neosho County, a tract of great fertil-ity, but largely unsettled, much of the land still belonging to the rail-roads. Thence we bore down into Montgomery County, and traversed |
