Cincinnati and St. Louis strike you as large and growing cities; but they do not impress you like Chicago, at least as she did before the great fire. They seem to have taken Quaker Philadelphia, as their type and model, rather than buoyant New York. Many of their streets, you find similarly named, and a like atmosphere pervades much of their business. In talking with their magnates of trade and finance, you note a conservative tone, that illy accords with your ideas of the West, and you are inclined to wonder whether the far-famed push and pluck of that romantic region are not myths after all. Buffalo and Toledo, Cleveland and Chicago, however, would soon undeceive you—especially, Chicago. The push and drive, the enterprise and elan of New York, that are reproduced so well along our northern tier of cities, all culminated at Chicago—at least before the fire—until she seemed New York incarnate or even intensified. The metropolis and brain of the northwest, how a day in her busy streets braced and inspired one! With all her brave memories of the past, no wonder she still believes enthusiastically in herself, and even in her ashes doubted not her future!
St. Louis, long her rival in trade, we found just beginning to recover from the benumbing effects of slavery and the rebellion. The rebellion, sealing up her railroads and extinguishing her down-river trade, had given her a bad set back. But she was already fast picking up the broken threads of her commerce, and was again preparing to contend with Chicago for the palm of supremacy. Seated on the Mississippi, with a vast river trade up and down, and an immense region back of her, her geographical position could scarcely be surpassed, and no doubt she has a grand and noble future before her. Her levees, we found, thronged with steamers, some up for New Orleans 1,200 miles south; others for Fort Benton 3,100 miles north and west. Her population already exceeded a quarter of a million. Her suburbs were steadily filling up, in spite of numerous sinkholes in the limestone formation there. Her streets were already well gridironed with horse-railroads. Her facilities for business were large and increasing. And with her vast system of rivers, north to the British Dominion and south to the gulf, and her rapidly developing back country—even to the Rocky Mountains and New Mexico—nature seems to have destined her to become the great and abiding metropolis of all that region. Her vast bridge and tunnels were not yet begun, but she was already prophesying great things for the future.
From St. Louis, three hundred miles through Missouri, to Leavenworth, Kansas, you find a noble region, that needs only a live population to make it a garden. It is mostly rich rolling prairie, but with more timber and streams than in Illinois, and with limestone abounding nearly everywhere. All along the route, it was plain to be seen, Missouri had suffered sadly from slavery. Both in population and business, in town and country, clearly "the trail of the serpent" had been over her all. But the wave of immigration, now that slavery was dead, had already reached her, and we found its healthful currents everywhere overflowing her bottoms and prairies. The new-comers seemed to be largely Yankee and German, almost everywhere. France once so predominant here, was already supplanted by Germany, and the Teuton bade fair to rule Missouri soon, even then. At Hermann, where we stopped for dinner, a German Hebe tendered us excellent native wine, and the culture of the grape, we learned, had already become a leading industry of this section of the state. The sturdy Rhine-men, as true to freedom as in the days of Tacitus, were already everywhere planting vineyards, and in the near future were sure of handsome returns from petty farms, that our old time "Pikes" and "Border Ruffians" would have starved on. Throughout the ride, the Missouri or Big-Muddy, as the Indians call it, was often in sight, a broad tawny stream; and many of its bends and reaches were so beautiful, that it hardly seemed to deserve that savage criticism of Bayard Taylor's, as being "too lazy to wash itself." Its banks as a rule are higher and better, than those of the Mississippi anywhere below Cairo, and its bottom lands seemed unsurpassed in fertility.
Leavenworth, on the Missouri, where it takes a final bend north, was still the entrepôt for New Mexico and the plains. Omaha had already tapped the Colorado and Utah trade and travel, and has since mainly absorbed them, by the completion of the Union Pacific railroad. But Leavenworth still had a large trade and travel of her own, as a point of departure for New Mexico and the Plains, and seemed destined to maintain it. Only a decade or so before, she was without a house or inhabitant; but now she claimed thirty-thousand people, and was rapidly increasing. We found many handsome stores and elegant residences everywhere going up. Her streets were fast being graded and macadamized, and the guttering especially was most solid and substantial. She had several daily papers already, with weekly editions of a large circulation. Many of her stores were doing a wholesale business of a million of dollars annually. A fine Catholic church was being erected, which when completed promised to be the chief ornament of the city. But the largest and showiest building there then was a combined brewery and dance house, which augured badly for the town. Off on the suburbs of the city, we passed a park of wagons or "prairie-schooners," acres in extent, tangible evidence that we had already struck the commerce of the Plains.
By Lawrence and Topeka, already towns of several thousand people, over the historic plains of Kansas, we sped along up the valley of the Kaw or Kansas to Waumega; and thence, as I have said, by stage to Fort Riley. Junction City, just beyond Fort Riley, at the confluence of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, we found to be a hamlet of several hundred people, and already growing rapidly. It had been projected, with the expectation that the railroad would bend north here, and ascending the Republican go thence to Denver, which would have made Junction the last station and grand depot for all New Mexico and much of the Rocky Mountain region. But, as it had been decided afterwards to keep on up the Smoky Hill instead, Junction had missed of much of its importance. Its location, however, was good, at the confluence thus of two rivers; and with its single street of straggling houses, of all styles of architecture, and in every stage of construction, it was a good specimen of a frontier town, in the first year of its settlement.
The country as a whole, thus far through Kansas, much surpassed our expectations. Not only were the broad bottoms of the Kaw everywhere dotted with farms, but even the high rolling prairies beyond were fast settling up. Of course, settlements grew more scattering the farther we progressed westward; but they were always in sight and everywhere rapidly increasing. Herds of horses and cattle grazed along the bottoms, and grouse and sage-hens whirred up by the roadside as we sped along. At one point, a brace of oxen, yoked together, got upon the track, and our engine mangled the poor beasts dreadfully before they escaped. The road, as yet, was poorly ditched, and without fences on either side, so that horses and cattle strayed across it quite at will. The wheat-crop had everywhere been fair, and Indian corn was promising to be magnificent. Corn had looked well, all through Ohio and Indiana, Illinois and Missouri; but in the Kansas bottoms it was superb in its "embattled glory," and seemed to be a great favorite with the farmers. Indeed, Kansas, both in soil and climate, is a rare state, and well worth to freedom all the blood and treasure she cost us. True she lacks timber; but so far she had got along, and the weight of testimony seemed everywhere to be that her growth of timber improved with the reclamation and settlement of the country. The Indian was everywhere retiring before the pale faces, and the autumnal fires ceasing with his departure, bushes and trees soon appeared, and we heard repeated instances of springs even breaking out, where none had been known before. As an offset