xxxi] WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 155 



not write to me even ! " So we condoled with him, and said 

 good-bye to the unappreciated botanist of the arid plains of 

 Kansas. 



Twenty-nine years before my visit great herds of buffalo 

 roamed over the site of Salina, and there was not a house or 

 a hut for fifty miles around. It is now a rapidly growing town, 

 with five railways diverging from it, and land speculation is 

 rampant. In the business part of this small town lots twenty- 

 five feet wide and one hundred and twenty deep, in the main 

 street, sell at from $6000 to $ 10,000 (from £1200 to ^2000) ; 

 in the suburbs (a mile from centre of town) about $1200. 

 Farms near the town, of good land, can be had at from £6 to 

 ;£io an acre. But the climate, the solitude, the dreariness of 

 such a life must be a great drawback. 



I left Salina in the evening of May 18 for Denver and 

 San Francisco. We soon reached open undulating prairie, 

 small villages or towns fifteen or twenty miles apart, and 

 often not a house visible ; very little cultivation, and rarely 

 any trees. At five o'clock next morning, still in undulating 

 sandy plains with very little grass but a few tufts of herba- 

 ceous plants with white composite flowers. Then low hills 

 of horizontal strata of sandstone ; and we crossed some 

 small streams in broad sandy beds, with sometimes a few 

 cotton-wood trees growing near them. Here I first saw some 

 of the prairie-dog cities, as they are called — sandy mounds 

 thrown up by these pretty rodents, one of which would be 

 often seen sitting upright on the top of it. 



We reached Denver at 8.20, and having four hours to wait 

 here, after breakfast I called on Professor James H. Baker, 

 Principal of the High School, to inquire if he knew of any 

 local botanist who could give me information as to any good 

 localities in the mountains for alpine plants. He told me that 

 one of his lady teachers was a botanist, and took me into 

 her class-room. As she was engaged in giving a lesson on 

 ancient history to a class of boys and girls, we sat down and 

 waited till it was over, when I was introduced to her, and 

 we had an hour's talk, and she showed me dried plants she 

 had collected on Pike's Peak. She told me that Graymount, 



