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Show THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 135 one to find his high- priced property. Between Spruce and Elm Streets was a fine field of corn, and just beyond, in the north- east corner of the city plat, we found the village of Troy. After a week there, and a visit to the Otoe Reservation, just over the line in Nebraska, we again turned northward. From Troy to Elmwood, opposite St. Joseph, we pass rapidly over a down grade. St. Joseph looked beautiful from the western bank of the Missouri, but like most of the towns along that stream, was quiet in 1871. The reaction from the speculative fever of 186470, which culminated in the panic of 1873, came on two years earlier in the West than in the East. Men who felt themselves growing weaker, withdrew distant investments and concentrated their strength nearer home. Thence we moved up the Missouri Valley, by way of the Kansas City, St. Joseph nnd Council Bluifs Road ; all the way through grassy meadowr s or wooded vales, stretching from river to bluffs, where not one acre in ten is fenced or cultivated, and there is always a gentle breeze and freedom from dust. Few trips are so enjoyable. It is strange that so little of that broad, rich valley is occupied; it is in easy reach of mar-ket, and the Nebraska side is well settled. It is observable that the eastern margin of all these new States is settled more thickly than the western border of the States next east of them. Cities on the western banks of streams grow faster than those on the east-ern, and railroads run-ning east and west , , . ,, " GREAT EXPECTATIONS." seem to have more lite and energy than those running north and south. Before one State is filled to the western border, another is opened and surveyed, and em-igrants seem to prefer the newer one. Another cause, perhaps, is that large grants of Iowa land were made to railroads. There were five such strips granted across the State, besides several smaller ones ; on the Nebraska side the grants run westward from the river, and not parallel with it. Within railroad grants the settler can only take eighty acres, for which he must pay $ 2.50 per acre; outside of them he can take a hundred and sixty at half the price per acre. Omaha and Council Bluffs we also found dull ; clerks had time to read the papers, and the stir which attended the last two years of con-structing the Union Pacific was conspicuously lacking. Thence to |