A GUIDE rO MEXICO. 



erect schools and churches; and thus it is that along this road we see thrift and 

 enterprise, and a New-England spirit of culture in its population. No road in this 



country has proved so bene- 

 carefully provided for the 



SLEEPING-CAR, PENN. R.R. 



ficial to its supporters, and has so 

 comfort of its patrons. From its 

 source to its ending, it has built 

 elegant stations, and at convenient 

 intervals provided commodious 

 and comfortable hotels and din- 

 ing-halls, at each of which a full 

 half-hour is allowed for the dis- 

 cussing of a long and varied memi. 

 This great road, with nearly 

 2,000 miles of track, its hundreds 

 of cars and engines, and thorough- 

 ness of equipment for the safety 

 and comfort of passengers, is most 

 wisely controlled by young and 

 enterprising men, whose extraor- 

 dinary penetration and grasp of affairs 

 keep this gigantic corporation ahead of the 

 requirements of the age. Although an in- 

 dependent and totally distinct corporation, 

 yet its animating spirit is in harmony with 

 that which pervades the great Pennsylvania Road ; for likewise it has constantly 

 encouraged the building of tributary lines, until its iron fingers extend over half a 

 dozen great States and Territories, and progress and civilization follow as surely in 

 its wake, as fertility the rill from the river in a desert region. 



But for the settled purpose of the writer of these pages, not to diverge until the 

 goal is reached (the City of Mexico), Kansas, with its numerous streams, its illim- 

 itable prairie ranches, its prosperous towns, growing so rapidly that their aspect 

 constantly changes, would stop us to wonder a hundred times. 



A road of the same standard gauge as those in the East, solid and smooth, 

 conducts us across the entire length of Kansas. From the time we leave the 

 union depot at Kansas City, until farewell is said to the United States at El Paso, 

 there is a constantly shifting series of views, — "prairie, plain, plateau, peak, and 

 pueblo." At Lawrence, as the train speeds by, one can see the noble buildings 

 of the University of Kansas looking down upon the " most beautiful city of the 

 West," — an historic city, for here was the first free-state settlement, and here 

 began the great antislavery struggle. "It is peaceful enough now; but it numbers 

 among its citizens men who stood shoulder to shoulder with John Brown, or 

 looked into the barrels of Quantrell's rifles." Not far off is Topeka, a bright and 

 enterprising city of 25,000, beyond which the road dips southward, and reaches 

 the valley of the Arkansas, keeping the great river company nearly the entire 

 breadth of the State, through scenery which in springtime may be called the 

 fairest in the West. At Coolidge the road leaves Kansas, and at La Junta takes 

 a departure from the Arkansas, and strikes southward, across a corner of Colorado, 

 and enters New Mexico. Passengers from Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, 

 Leadville, and even from Salt Lake City and far-off San Francisco, can join the 



