2 
KANSAS. 
childish curiosity was excited thereby. Years came and went; 
and with them came the increase of wealth and power to the 
American people, and the progress of the age. As California 
became a portion of her dominions, gold was found in the bed of 
her rivers, and in the bosom of her soil. Thousands flocked thither 
from the whole country. The young and ardent from the Atlantic 
States, unused to toil and hardships, but eager in their search for 
gold, left all the comforts of home, and entered the lists. Men 
from the West, not quite so daintily raised, pressed onwards in the 
race, and together they sought this far-famed Eldorado. Some 
realized their anticipations, but many a loved and cherished one 
“ fell and perished, weary with the march of life.” Thousands 
reached the goal of their hopes, by a long passage around the 
Horn, some by a slow, vexatious crossing of the Isthmus ; but 
thousands more took that route which promised most of health to 
the traveller, — the one opened from Missouri overland to the 
Pacific shore, by the courageous, the enterprising, the adventurous 
Colonel Fremont. This, the finding of which through the moun¬ 
tains by unequalled energy, and endurance, and trials, and suffer¬ 
ings, which would have unnerved ordinary men, became now the 
general thoroughfare to Oregon and California. This newly 
opened highway led directly through the Indian Territory, known 
to my childhood as the “ Great American Desert; ” and many a 
one, looking upon its unrivalled and ever varying scenes of beauty, 
as his route for days lay over its beautiful rolling prairies, decked 
with the loveliest flowers in every shade of coloring, or camped 
under the noble trees by the bank of some swiftly flowing stream, 
felt strong desires for a home, where he could sit under his own 
vine and fig-tree, in a land like this. Many then resolved to find 
therein such home, when it should be thrown open to settlement. 
The face of this country is beautiful beyond all comparison. The 
prairies, though broad and expansive, stretching away miles in 
many places, seem never lonely or wearisome, being gently undu¬ 
lating, or more abruptly rolling; and, at the ascent of each new 
roll of land, the traveller finds himself in the midst of new loveli¬ 
ness. There are also high bluffs, usually at some little distance 
from the rivers, running through the entire length of the country, 
