104 BUFFALO LAND. 



snuffing out a candle. Texas, in her rude solitude, 

 formerly stretched protecting arms to the evil doers 

 from other states, and to her these classes flocked. 

 She offered them not a city but a whole empire of 

 refuge. 



Just be^^ond Brookville, two hundred miles from 

 the eastern border of Kansas, our road commenced 

 ascending the Harker Bluifs, a series of sandstone 

 ridges bordering on the plains. 



On our left. Mushroom Rock w^as pointed out to 

 us, a huge table of stone poised on a solitary pillar, 

 and strangely resembling the plant from wdiich it 

 is named. As the professor informed us, we were 

 now on the eastern shore of a once vast inland ocean, 

 the bed of which now formed the plains. Sachem 

 thought the rock might be a petrified toad-stool, on 

 a scale with the gigantic toads which hopped around 

 in the mud of that age of monsters. The professor 

 thought it was fashioned by the waters, in their 

 eddyings and w\ashings. 



Subsequent examinations showed this entire region 

 to be one of remarkable interest to the geologist. 

 A few miles east of Mushroom Rock, near Bavaria, 

 as we learned from the conductor, human foot-prints 

 had been discovered in the sandstone. The pro- 

 fessor, who had long ascribed to man an earlier ex- 

 istence upon earth than that given him by geology, 

 was greatly excited, and at his earnest request, wdien 

 the down train was met, we returned upon it to Ba- 

 varia. 



That place we found to consist of two buildings, 

 each serving the double purpose of house and store, 



