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Show - i30 WESTERN WILDS. % open prairie is rich in all the fruits and grains of this clime. The . Saints made a good selection for Zion. Could they have held it, they would doubtless have prospered as have the Gentiles; but the Prophet proposed, and the Missourians disposed, and things are as they are. Thence we crossed the Kaw into Kansas, and in a two hours' ride up the heavily wooded valley of that stream reached Lawrence, the Athens of the Missouri valley, a town rich in historic interest and pleasant to dwell in. In the summer of 1849, a party of gold- hunters camped for the night near the junction of the Kaw and Wakarusa, where the level prairie of the lower valley begins to yield to high ridges and rolling plains. They were enchanted with the beauty of the spot, and on their return from California organized a company in Massachusetts ; again sought this spot, and founded Lawrence, a lone settlement of " Free- State men," forty miles from the slave border. The city has already an ancient and a modern history, a mythical and a heroic age. In its first three years it suffered four regular invasions from Missouri. In March, 1855, the " border ruffian? " came, and made a population of nine hundred and sixty- two appear to cast a vote of a thousand and thirty- four. In November, 1855, occurred the " Wakarusa War ; " the town was regularly besieged, and several men killed. May 21, 1856, Sheriff Jones " executed the writ" of Judge Lecompte, by burning the Free- State Hotel, and pillaging the town. But freedom gained the day in Kansas, and the city grew. The Eld-ridge House was built on the site of the Free- State Hotel, and Kansas went through the war for the Union " 5,000 men ahead of all drafts." But the worst was to come. At daylight of August 21, 1863, Quantrell and his gang of two hundred murderers dashed into the place; the rising sun saw the city in flames, and a hundred , and twenty- five citizens lying dead among the ruins. Eighteen more afterwards died of their wounds. In the horrid annals of Western barbarism, only the Mountain Meadow Massacre can rival it : this, ' by a community educated under the discipline of slavery; that, by a community educated under the discipline of polygamy. At one house two men were killed, and, in the presence of their shrieking wives, their heads were cut off, and stuck upon the gate- posts ! Again the city rose from its ruins, and grew more rapidly than ever. Verily, it took men to settle such a place and hold it for freedom. But " The grain of God springs up From ashes beneatli ; And the crown of His harvest Is life out of death." And Lawrence is now beyond question the most moral and intelli- |