OCR Text |
Show 134 WESTERN WILDS. two bull- snakes, and a few rods of worm- fence, after which, adds the local chronicle, he began to feel better. From Ottawa we took the Kansas City branch of the road, passing through the beautiful farming regions of Johnson County ; and from Kansas City the Missouri Valley Road to Leavenworth. Railroads have been built for future rather than present demands in Kansas; and the reaction in 1873, as it prevented the rapid growth which was expected, has caused many an investor to wail for his money in rail-way stocks. Ten years from now Kansas railroads will pay div-idends; at present running expenses only are counted on. The first station out is Wyandotte, with perhaps 3,000 people, once a rival, now " merely a feeder of Kansas City." A little farther on is the twice-dead Quindaro, once the great city ( to be) of this valley. In 1857 and 1858, it supported a rattling daily paper known as the Quindaro Chindowan. The first was the name of the Delaware Indian woman who sold the plat to the whites; the second, in the same tongue, means " a bundle of rods " the sign of authority. Its bright and saucy editorials excelled all specimens extant of Kansas blowing. Here was to be a second Babylon, a city founded on a rock, while Wyandotte, on the sand, would sink to nothingness; here was to be the entrepot of all travel from the plains; Kansians would certainly pat-ronize their own town rather than cross the Kaw into Missouri, and here would be the metropolis of the glorious free and boundless West. But an inscrutable law of nature has determined the location of great cities ; Kansas City got all the trade, Wyandotte stood still, and Quin-daro disappeared. The site was entirely abandoned for some years, and is now occupied by a few farmers. The original locators had kept even by selling lots ; later buyers were ruined. Leavenworth and Atchison we voted " dull," and passed on to Troy, the neat little capital of Doniphair County, and another " city " which had outlived its first aspirations. So many " cities" were laid off and incorporated in Kansas that a wag in the first Free- State Legislature gravely proposed a law " to reserve every fourth section of land for agricultural purposes." Doniphan County is the oldest part of Kansas; the region is rolling or hilly, but the soil is fertile, and timber and run-ning water abundant. The junction of the Atchison and Nebraska Road with the St. Joseph and Denver City Road, is a mile south-west of Troy, giving the traveler the benefit of an omnibus ride up " Almond Avenue." At the corner of the avenue and Broadway, I noticed a fine herd of cattle grazing, and through this part of the city the stock have kicked down the surveyor's stakes, so it is difficult for |