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Show 438 WESTERN WILDS. genders disease; the tramp of from three to eight hundred miles to the border causes " heating of the hoof/' and the poisonous matter ex-uding therefrom is left upon the grass. Hence, say the Kansians, the " Texas cattle fever." The Texan animals themselves do not suffer from it ; native cattle alone, who feed after them, are infected by it. In the early days the Kansas Legislature set apart the width of one township, a strip six miles wide, along which Texans might be driven to the Pacific Railroad. But in a little while settlements reached this strip, and another was located, terminating at Ellsworth, which be-came for awhile the great cattle depot. Again the wave of settlement reached and overflowed this strip, and a third was located, with depot at Wichita, on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Road. And here is noted a marvel indeed. As the border line of settlements steadily moves westward, as domestic stock overrun the country, as fields are plowed and orchards planted, the settlers say the border line between the soft grass of the Missouri Valley and the buffalo grass of the plains, moves westward at the rate of five miles per year ! It is common testimony there that, as the country is settled, the climate grows more moist; that timothy and blue- grass can now be grown where twenty years ago only the hardy bunch- grass found a footing, and wheat on the high plains which were once thought utterly barren. From Cherry-vale a branch railway runs out to Independence, the bustling capital of Montgomery County, which claims three thousand inhabitants, and has at least two- thirds as many. Five years before, a mowing ma-chine was run over the ground to clear away the rank grass, and after it came the surveyors, mapping out the experimental town ; in two years thereafter it had a thousand inhabitants, and was " the future metropolis of the South- west." I found it just entering on the dull times which have ruined so many bright hopes. The second day of my stay the Republicans had a grand mass meeting, " to devise means of relief from the prevailing depression and the difficulties under which Kansas labored." A foreign visitor would have thought him-self in a community of natural orators. The speakers were lawyers, doctors, farmers, cattle- breeders, men of all trades and men of none ; all spoke with ability, and no two suggested the same plan. It was a meeting of pleasant diversity one of the most enjoyable I ever at-tended. One speaker was red hot for free trade " all our troubles resulted from our wretched tariff." Another protested against any further contraction of the currency, and still another damned the rail-roads and Eastern monopolists. The Congressman representing the district was present, and suggested two measures of relief: jetties at |