56 
KANSAS. 
a bottle of syrup, cheese, a small box with knives, forks and 
spoons, and little papers of pepper and salt. Tin cup for drink¬ 
ing, with canteens, are also indispensable. Blankets and comfort¬ 
ables for camping ought not to be forgotten; also provisions for 
the horses. 
Our cupboard was completed to-day, and we have cleared ail the 
tables of crockery. Our house gives promise now of being in 
reality a house at no distant day. 
24 th. — The timbers are drawn for the kitchen. We are to 
have another room sixteen feet by twelve, and with doors opening 
directly opposite each other. It will be delightful and cool. A 
large chest, which we have used for a cupboard since the removal 
of the bureau, is moved up the stairway, and finds a place just 
fitting it near the head. We find behind it a missing pie, whose 
sudden disappearance had been a mystery, and awakened some 
fears of the too neighborly inclinations of prairie wolves, or the 
nightly visitation of some hungry traveller; our open doors and 
unfastened windows furnishing no safeguard against any who 
choose to enter. 
The roads for many days have been full of wagons — white- 
covered, emigrant wagons. We cannot look out of the windows 
without seeing a number, either upon the road through the prairie 
east of us, which comes in from Kansas city, where most emi¬ 
grants leave the boats and buy wagons and provisions for the 
journey, or, going on the hill west, on their way to Topeka, or 
other settlements above. 
The prairie, too, is alive with people, coming and going. Some 
^re upon horseback, and others in carriages of eastern manufac¬ 
ture ; while the busy teams, carrying stone for the hotel and 
other large buildings, give to the whole town an appearance of 
unprecedented thrift which renders the name of Yankee Town, 
bestowed upon it by the border friends, richly merited. At night 
we see the camp-fires all about us, on the prairies and in the 
ravines. The appearance of the men, preparing their evening 
meal, is singularly grotesque and gypsy-like. 
2Qth. —- Some young ladies called at the house early this morn¬ 
ing. They were just in Tie territory from Ohio, and came up 
