INTBODUCTOKY. 



On the atlases of thirty or forty years ago, when the 

 stock of information concerning the territory now com- 

 prised in the flourishing States of Kansas and Nebraska, 

 and in Eastern Colorado and Dakota, was exceedingly 

 limited, the whole of it was represented as the " Great 

 American Desert." The boy who studied geography 

 then conceived an affection for this desert, a fact which 

 did honor to his patriotism. His country had the 

 highest mountains, the greatest lakes, and the largest 

 rivers in the world, and it flattered his national pride to 

 see on its map a desert which rivalled in size anything 

 the Old World could produce in the same line. There 

 was one natural feature of the Eastern Continent which 

 humbled his pride of country somewhat. This was 

 the terrible Maelstrom on the coast of Norway, that 

 furious whirlpool which the Western World had 

 nothing to match. But he has lived to see that un- 

 matched whirlpool robbed of its terrors. It is almost 

 surveyed out of existence, and in its present condition 

 it does not greatly outrank the late Hell Gate in New 

 York harbor. With the disappearance of the hated 

 Maelstrom, however, he has had the mortification to see 

 his favorite desert vanish from the map. That barren 

 terra-incognita of his youth is now one of the finest 



