OCTOBER 99 



ploughed fields; the dull black surfaces of dry 

 marshes must serve as substitutes for newly 

 turned furrows. Here too are black railroad em- 

 bankments in which coal slack has been extensively 

 used. These banks and the arrival at " Coalfield '^ 

 remind the traveler that he is passing near a con- 

 siderable area of coal mining ; but this carload of 

 freshly cut cordwood, and the dark masses of fair- 

 ly heavy timber whence it came, are perhaps of 

 more poetic suggestion than the mineral fuel. The 

 streams are all open and flowing, though with little 

 water. Streams and ponds are littered with fallen 

 foliage and in one village several children are out 

 early raking yard and parking and burning the 

 dead leaves. 



Other men in days gone by have traveled to and 

 from this section by more primitive methods of 

 transportation than a railway train. We pass 

 through Eddyville. Here Ezra Meeker arrived by 

 team from Burlington in the fall of 1851 ; here he 

 spent part of the bitterly cold winter that followed, 

 and from here he set out in April, 1852, to cross 

 the plains and mountains to Oregon, with ox team 

 and prairie schooner. From Oskaloosa, William 

 Edmundson started for California, in 1850, keep- 

 ing a diary of the journey, not yet printed. The 

 ox team was not a rarity in our boyhood days at 

 Grinnell. The town boys sometimes played at 

 driving oxen, part of the charm consisting of those 



