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Show CHAPTEH XIII. OKLAHOMA. THE year 1872 opened with a revival of interest in the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, otherwise known as the Thirty- fifth Parallel Route. This road was already completed from St. Louis to Vinita, in the Indian Territory, and was to run thence westward to the R- io Grande, and through a succession of valleys and passes, nearly on the line of the thirty- fifth parallel, to California, terminating at San Fran-cisco. That city and St. Louis had struck hands on the project; thirty- five million dollars had been pledged ; it was the era of specu-lative railroad construction, and we were promised an early completion of the line. I determined to traverse the proposed route or as much of it as possible on horseback, and give the world an impartial re-port. Bonneville, the early explorer, immortalized by the genius of Irving, had confidently named this as the best route; Kit Carson had been earnest in its favor, and Government early had it surveyed. But Fremont's worjc made the nation more familiar with the northern route ; the war came, and the South lost her chance. With the return of peace both southern lines were aided by grants of land; but Tom Scott's Texas Pacific has again got the start. Spring wras just tinging the prairies with a pale green when I en-tered the country of the Cherokees, and soon after crossing Grand River passed a heavy wooded strip, and in the next prairie found the terminus town of Vinita. Here the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Rail-road crosses the A. & P., and here we should naturally expect to see a place. In Kansas or Nebraska we should see a city with lots selling at from one hundred to two thousand dollars, dwellings and stores going up on every hand, one or two live journals blowing the place as the " future metropolis of the boundless West, the last great chance for profitable investment," etc., and a dozen streets lively with the rattle of commerce. Here, we see nothing. We feel the dead calm of stag-nation ; we breathe the atmosphere of laziness. There is one tolerable hotel, one stone store, and two frame ones, kept respectively by a Cherokee and a Delaware; and, besides the railroad employes, there ( 194) |