XXII.

EXCEPT that vegetables are earlier and more abundant, and that one is a little nearer to fruit and New York newspapers, I do not find a great deal of difference between the civilization of Nebraska and that of Colorado. Omaha and Denver are places of about the same size, — the latter probably the better built of the two. From this time on, the former will increase more rapidly; but when the railroad reaches Denver, I imagine the balance will be restored. The people of Omaha are convinced that their place will be another Chicago; and, as they see six hundred buildings going up this season, we cannot so much wonder at their "great expectations." They certainly have a beautiful location — if the Missouri River were to be depended upon. The crescent hills, open toward the east, inclose a high, favorable shelf of land, upon which the city can spread for some time to come. It is three miles across to the Iowa hills, and the picturesque town of Council Bluffs at their feet, so that they who reside in the higher part of Omaha enjoy a much broader and more beautiful view than can be had from any other place on the Missouri.

I devoted the first twenty-four hours to absolute rest, after my journey across the Plains. Moreover, the weather was truly African in its dry, intense heat, making sightseeing so much of a task that I deserve some credit for seeing anything beyond what the hotel windows allowed. In the pleasant company of Governor Saunders and Mr. Frost, of the Pacific Railroad, I visited the height on which the Capitol stands, the sulphur springs, and the extensive shops and works which the railroad company has erected within the past six months. What the latter has accomplished is really amazing. There is now rail enough on hand to reach Cottonwood, one hundred miles beyond Fort Kearney; several splendid locomotives are waiting to be called into service, the manufacture of cars has commenced, and the grandest basis is already laid for carrying on the business of the road. The ties, mostly brought down from the Upper Missouri, — whether of pine, elm, or cotton-wood, — are burnetized to render them durable. Some idea of the enormous expense of building the road may be obtained from the statement that each tie, when put down in its place, has cost the company from one and a half to two dollars! The cost of bringing railroad iron, locomotives, and machinery to Omaha is also very great, as there is no rail connection with the East. None of the lines through Iowa will be completed before next summer.

The same process which I had noticed in Kansas — the gradual restoration of forests — may be observed here. The hills and valleys around Omaha, wherever they have been protected from fire, are rapidly being clothed with timber. Clumps of cotton-wood and evergreens — sometimes small groves of the former — have been planted around the farm-houses, which are built in dips and hollows of the boundless grassy waves of the landscape.

The country is one of the most beautiful I ever looked upon. A little more sandy, perhaps, than Kansas, but equally fertile, it presents the same general features. I am more than ever struck with the great difference between this region and that to the east of the Mississippi. Here, without very bold or prominent forms, there is none of the wearisome monotony of the prairie, as in Illinois; no unsightly clearings, ragged timber, or swampy tracts, as in Indiana and Ohio; but Nature has given the smoothness and finish which elsewhere comes from long cultivation; and in twenty years from now both Kansas and Nebraska will appear to be older than any other States west of the Alleghanies. They have little of the new, half-developed, American air about them; but suggest some region of Europe, from which war has swept away the inhabitants.

I crossed to Council Bluffs, which has an ancient, substantial appearance contrasted with Omaha. The people insisted that their rolling prairies, behind the bluffs, were even finer than those of Nebraska, — which is scarcely possible. They (the people) have just awakened to the necessity of annexing themselves to the business world, and are now laboring to hurry the railroad through from Boonsborough. Some day, perhaps, the Missouri may leave the Omaha side of the valley and come back to them: at present, their distance from the steamboat landings is a great drawback. The settling of Montana, nevertheless, has given a new impulse to all the towns on the river. No less than sixty boats have gone up to Fort Benton this season.

On Monday morning I took the steamer for Plattsmouth, some twenty-five or thirty miles below, by the river. I should have preferred the land journey, but for a heat of 102° in the shade, a wind like a furnace blast, and stifling dust. While the boat was in motion, a barely endurable temperature was produced, and I enjoyed, here and there, some lively glimpses of valleys on the Nebraska side, that of the Platte especially being superb. Plattsmouth is nearly a mile below the junction of the rivers, — a pleasant little place of a thousand inhabitants. Nothing but the heat prevented me from spending the rest of the day and evening very agreeably there.

On Tuesday to Nebraska City, forty miles further, by the river. There is little to note on the way except the endless changes of the current, adding hundreds of acres to the meadows on one side, and undermining cotton-wood forests on the other. Nebraska City is not seen to advantage from the river, to which it presents its narrowest side, the chief portion of the place — which has seven or eight thousand inhabitants — lying in the rear of the bluffs. It is an active, lively town, in spite of a predominance of the Missouri-Secesh element, as I am informed. I found a very comfortable hotel, and was indebted to an intelligent German physician for a drive around the heights toward evening. The heat was still my great torment.

There was no boat down the river on Wednesday, and as I had an engagement at Brownville, twenty-five miles distant, I was obliged to have dealings with a livery-stable. The extreme of extortion in this line had been reached, I imagined, in Kansas. I was mistaken. For the team I hired (driven by an ex-Rebel soldier) I was obliged to pay at the rate of eighty-five cents per mile! This is double Colorado and treble California prices. I was unable to resist the outrage; for the liverymen of Nebraska City have a mutual agreement to swindle strangers, and do not interfere with each other’s operations. This is one of the disadvantages of travel in the West. We are told that competition regulates prices: it does not. On the contrary, combination keeps them up. No people are so fleeced and flayed as ours. The law offers no protection, because our politicians fear to offend any portion of the voting classes. "They manage things differently in France."

Neither the consciousness of having been imposed upon (a mean, disagreeable sensation), nor the stifling heat of the day could prevent me from enjoying to the full the magnificent country I traversed. During the five hours I was upon the road I never lost the keen sense of surprise and admiration which I felt on climbing the first rise of land after leaving Nebraska City. The wide, billowy green, dotted all over with golden islands of harvest; the hollows of dark, glittering maize; the park-like clumps of timber along the courses of streams; the soft, airy blue of the distant undulations; these were the materials which went to the making up of every landscape, and of which, in their sweet, harmonious, pastoral beauty, the eye never grew weary Not even when the sun burned with the stupefying fierceness of noon, and the vegetation seemed to crisp and shrivel in the fiery south wind, did I wish to shorten the journey.

Brownville is a small, but pretty town, with a decided New England atmosphere. By the time I reached it, I had decided that this should be my last day of mere sightseeing, and my last evening of lecture, in such a temperature. I turned away from the enticements of Pawnee, and other interior districts, and resolutely set my face toward home. There was no boat the next day, but a stage for St. Joseph (between eighty and ninety miles distant) the same evening; consequently a splendid moon, with neither heat nor dust, for a considerable portion of the way. At eleven o’clock I said good-by to the friends who had made my short stay so pleasant, and, making a virtue of an inevitable fact, decided that the night was too beautiful to be spent in slumber.

The records of the United States Land Office at Brownville show that seventy-one thousand acres were entered in the district during the quarter ending June 30. As two thirds of this amount were taken by actual settlers as homesteads; as the other districts of the Territory show very nearly an equal growth, and as the business of the present quarter, so far, keeps pace with the last, it is easy to estimate the increase of population for the year. It cannot be reckoned at less than fifteen thousand, making the present population of the Territory about seventy-five thousand. When the splendid agricultural capacities of the country are better understood, the ratio of immigration will increase. Nebraska cannot much longer be kept out of the Union by A. J.’s one-man power.

The night-journey was delicious. There was no other passenger, and I rode with the driver, a Union soldier from Massachusetts, (how different from my Rebel of the day before!) for the sake of society. The meadows, thickets, groves, and grain-fields near at hand were clearly revealed in the moonlight, but beyond them the scenery melted into a silvery indistinctness. The signs of dawn came only too soon, for with the first light of day I knew that the dewy freshness of the air would be lost. I still had an entire day of heat before me.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called Rub (the true spelling would be Rouleau, after the first French settler), and then pushed onward toward the Kansas line. Across a bottom of almost incredible fertility, then a ferry over the beautiful Nemaha River, and we left Nebraska behind us. An Indian Reservation came next, and the sight of two gayly dressed squaws on horseback, and two naked boys trying to catch a pony, seemed to give a totally different character to the scenery. It became again the rich, free wilderness.

During the day I had several fellow-passengers, — a gentleman from the Cherokee Country, an intelligent and gloriously loyal Missouri lady, and several specimens of the local population. The road ran some distance inland from the river, climbing long swells whence there were out-looks over ten or fifteen miles of magnificent country. All this region is being rapidly settled. Villages — the sure sign of permanent occupation — are springing up here and there; neat, substantial farm-houses are taking the place of the original cabins; and hedges of Osage orange are gradually creeping around the broad fields. When I first saw the bottoms of the Kaw and Smoky Hill Fork, in Kansas, nearly two months ago, it seemed to me that such extraordinary beauty and fertility must be exceptional; but, last week, I found the same thing repeated on the Platte, all the way from Cottonwood to Omaha. Now I find it in the region intermediate between the two rivers, and from what I hear of the valleys of the Neosho, the Republican, the Big and Little Blues, the Nemaha and Loup Fork, I am satisfied that what I have seen is the ordinary, average type of all this country. I consider Kansas and Nebraska, with the western portions of Iowa and Missouri, as the largest unbroken tract of splendid farming land in the world.

No one of us will live to see the beauty and prosperity which these States, even in their rude, embryonic condition, already suggest. The American of to-day must find his enjoyment in anticipating the future. He must look beyond the unsightly beginnings of civilization, and prefigure the state of things a century hence, when the Republic will count a population of two hundred millions, and there shall be leisure for Taste and Art. We have now so much ground to occupy, and we make such haste to cover it, that our growth is — and must be — accompanied by very few durable landmarks. All is slight, shabby, and imperfect. Not until the greater part of our vacant territory is taken up, and there is a broad belt of settlement reaching from ocean to ocean, will our Western people begin to take root, consolidate their enterprise, and truly develop their unparalleled inheritance.

Travelling all day in a heat of more than 100º in the shade — the seventh day of such an extreme temperature — I hailed our approach to Elwood, opposite St. Joseph, with inexpressible relief. During the afternoon we met a great many emigrant wagons, carrying "poor whites" from Missouri, Kentucky, and perhaps Tennessee, to lands of better promise. The lank, brown men stared at us from under their wild, bushy hair, with an expression of ignorant wonder; the mothers, with their four to six small, towheaded children (usually "one at the breast"), sat uncomfortably upon piles of antediluvian furniture, and patiently endured heat, flies, and dust. All of these people were but one degree removed from pure barbarism, and their loyalty must have had its root in instinct rather than intelligence.

If we could diversify the course of emigration, it would be a great blessing to the country. A current from the North to the South, with a counter-current from the South to the North, would "reconstruct" the former Slave States more solidly than any political measure. At present, the movement is too much one way; and nothing shows the narrowness and blindness of the Southerners so much as their continued enmity toward the very class of men they most need.

At six o’clock this evening I reached the Missouri, and crossed to this place. Here I am at one of the termini of railroad connection with the Atlantic coast, and may consider my travels at an end. Here the picturesque ceases, and the tedious commonplace begins. So here I close my communication with my readers, very much more fatigued by my experiences than I trust they have been in the reading of them, and yet more refreshed and invigorated than the kindest of those who have followed me can possibly be.

THE END