LETTER FROM CHIHUAHUA. 
105 
unequaled in quality, quantity and variety at its elegant eating stations all the 
way through. 
Starting on May 9th with the Kansas Press Association, a body of about 
160 intelligent, vivacious and companionable gentlemen and ladies, under the 
management of the courteous and vigilant veteran F. P. Baker, of the Topeka 
Commonwealth, we rapidly passed across the well-known rich and thickly settled 
counties of Johnson, Douglas and Shawnee, thence southwestwardly from Topeka 
through the coal-fields and pasture-lands of Osage County into Lyon County, one 
of the oldest and most productive in the State, where we strike the Neosho Valley 
at Emporia, a handsome and metropolitan kind of city. Speeding along west- 
wardly over a lovely and fertile country well built up with towns and farms, we 
reach Newton at breakfast time, where we turn almost directly south to the place 
of the Press meeting, Winfield, Cowley County. The country from Newton to 
Winfield is surpassingly rich and attractive, so much so that it is one of the most 
thickly settled regions in Kansas. After the regular exercises of the session, con- 
sisting of addresses, election of officers and a social reception by the citizens of 
Winfield, we commenced the excursion. 
The first point of interest visited, was Garden City in Sequoyah County, 
near the extrehie western border of the State of Kansas. Here the soil is very 
fertile, but the rainfall is unreliable and insufficient for agricultural purposes; 
hence an extensive and successful system of irrigating the fields has been adopted, 
from which very gratifying results have followed. The members of the Press 
Association were taken in carriages and other vehicles some two or three miles up 
the Arkansas River to the head of the canal, where the whole plan was explained. 
The process of course simply depends upon securing a sufficient head of water to 
overflow the lands below and then leading it by small ditches and furrows through 
the fields and over the growing crops. 
The best crops are wheat, oats, rye, barley, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions 
and vegetables of all kinds, millet, broom corn, sorghum. Alfalfa clover, and, in 
fact, all crops are produced in this latitude. 
The following table will show the amount produced per acre and prices 
obtained for the same, in 1882 : 
Productions. 
BUSHELS PER 
ACRE. 
WEIGHT PER 
BUSHEL. 
PRICE REC'D. 
Barley 
Corn 
Oats 
50 
30 
75 
300 
500 
750 
1,000 
400 
12 
5 
200 
52 
60 
45 
60 
55 
57 
50 
56 
^ 75 
90 
75 
2 CO 
2 25 
2 25 
50 
I CO 
8 00 
5 00 
3 00 
Potatoes 
Sweet Potatoes 
Onions 
Turnips 
Artichokes 
Alfalfa Clover. . . . 
Millet 
Sorghnm 
. tons 
. tons 
. tons 
