20 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMBEICA. 



"vrliat a dinner ! — fried fish, fried mutton, fried eggs, fried 

 musli (a great luxury), fried potatoes, and fried pudding 

 all swimming in grease • bad coffee "without milk, dough cakes 

 without butter, and muddy water out of dirty glasses. Trying 

 to escape up a side street, we discovered the Methodist Chapel, 

 the Land Agency Office, labelled " Desirable town lot for sale," 

 the Masonic Hall (temporary building), and the more preten- 

 tious foundations of the Free School, Baptist Chapel, and 

 Episcopal Church. The suburbs consisted of tents of all shapes 

 and forms, with wooden doors; shanties, half canvas, half 

 wood. These were owned by squatters upon imsold lots. All 

 around were scattered the empty tins of the period, labelled 

 in large letters, " desiccated vegetables," " green corn, 

 "pears," ^'peaches," "oysters," and other untold luxuries. 



Still farther from the centre, dotted here and there, white 

 and glistening in the sun, we could see the camps of the " bull 

 trains," each made up of from ten to twenty huge wagons, 

 covered with white canvas, coralled sometimes in the form of a 

 square, sometimes of a circle, so as to form a place of protection 

 if attacked by Indians. An unusually wet season, and the 

 fearful depredations caused by the red-men further west, 

 detained an unusual number of these trains at that time 

 aroimd Salina. Partly shutting out the horizon on two sides, 

 was a continuous belt of rich green trees. These might have 

 been the commencement of a fine forest ; but alas ! as we 

 came up to them, we found only two rows — one on each side 

 of the river ; and ^beyond, the same broad sea of grass, tne 

 undulating plain, relieved only by some distant bluffs, ite 

 grass was rich and abundant — a very fortunate circumstance , 

 for everywhere were to be seen the droves of oxen, mules, 

 and horses belonging to the wagon trains, feeding an 

 fattening on their idleness. About the railroad station, an 



