176 
KANSAS. 
pound, and pumpkins one dollar and fifty cents per hundred. 
Batter, made’ here, is very nice, and until quite recently has 
been plenty at twenty-five cents. Milk varies from four to ten 
cents per quart. Beside the meats, beep, etc., venison, prairie 
chickens, turkeys, rabbits and squirrels, are often in the market; 
also oysters, in sealed cans. Yet, with all these gratifications for 
the palate, it is more than probable that, all these long days, 
some of our people have not tasted of them for want of money to 
buy them. Many a person gave freely of what he had in the 
siege of December, and while on guard at Lawrence lost all of his 
crops at home. As a people we are bankrupt. Bemittances from 
the East are lost, or the same thing to us, retained, with letters, 
by the officious meddlers in government pay in a neighboring 
state. Money drafts are months on their way, when twelve or four¬ 
teen days is all-sufficient time for the journey. The people in the 
territory are at no time safe. The cabin of the lone settler on 
the prairie is momentarily exposed to attack, yet no light comes 
from Congress — none from its head. 
This winter will be ever remembered for its unprecedented 
severity, and for that wicked use of power by the administration 
which would make the career of Caligula magnanimous and spot¬ 
less in the comparison. Those who sit in sealed houses, and by 
warm hearth-stones, no foes without or fears within, can never 
realize, as we in Kansas, on the exposed outposts, what a winter 
this has been to us. Our senses sharpened by the actual necessi¬ 
ties of life, and our perceptions quickened by their unsleeping 
vigilance and constant action, none better than we can realize the 
terrible infamy which will cling to those who have been the chief 
abetlors in filling up this cup of evil. Wrong-doing has marked 
their pathway, and shame will be their reward. Yet there is a 
golden bow of promise over us, the bright rainbow of hope; and, 
in characters clear as the sunlight and radiant as truth, beneath 
the arch encircling the snow-clad hills and prairies, and the-sad 
dwellers among them, is written: “ The days of the tyrant are 
numbered. He will hasten on his own downfall. 55 
