Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — OUT WEST. [ARTICLE]

OUT WEST.

In accordance with th« request ot friendly patrons the following notes of observations made while recently visiting relatives in southeastern Kansas, are with diffidence submitted to the readers of this, paper: The route taken was from Rensselaer to Remington, in a carriage kindly furnished and driven by S. I*. Thompson, Esq., who has frequently placed the writer under obligations for friendly acts; from Remington to Logansport by rail; from Logansport to Hannibal, Mo., ■over the Toledo, Wabash & Western railroad; from Hannibal to Ft. Scott, Parsons and Chanute (or New Chicago) on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad; from Ft. Scott to Girard over the Missouri River, Ft. Scott & Gulf railroad. At Girard found brother Charley waiting with a team to carry traveler and baggage to father’s house, nine miles away from town. One can not see much of a country by passing over it on the cars. The best part may be seen, or, as in case ot the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago line,, the road may traverse an inferior or positively bad strip with good lands only a few miles distant on either side.

From Remington to Logansport, and from there to Lafayette, the corn crop did not look as well as about Rensselaer. Below Lafayette, on Wea plains, corn fields loom up to the magnitude of young forests. Every stalk has one good ear on it, and some have two medium sized ones. Corn looked inferior from this region until after passing Springfield, Illinois. Not that all fields were poor, nor that there is no good corn along the road, but good fields are scattered and the exception rather than rule. From below Springfield to Hannibal, along river and creek bottoms, the crop is large and well matured. Across Missouri the crop is an excellent one. Wheat—fall wheat now growing—presents a fine appearance everywhere through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. The farther south one goes the smaller will he find young w r heat, because they have planted it later.

The counties visited m Kansas were Bourbon, Crawford, Cherokee, Labette and Neosho. These were visited both by rail and by wagon and team. The general appearance of the country in this section may be described as a vast prairie of considerable elevation, rolling, and frequently traversed by streams of water. Along the larger of these water courses—the Neosho river, Marmaton, Dry Wood, Cox, Cow, Lightning and Cherry—there are narrow strips of heavy timber. The soil is variable in quality, some of it being very rich and productive, and some almost barren. Quite a large portion of Bourbon county is shingled over with slabs of limestone rock, lying loosely upon the surface, or partially imbedded in the deposit. There are also vast quarries of lime and sandstone here and at intervals throughout the district visited; and at Ft. Scott it is claimed a fine bed of water lime or cement exists, of a quality equal to the famous deposits on the Ohio river at Louisville, Kentucky. Coal also abounds in Bourbon, Crawford, Cherokee and some portions of Labette counties, which is of good quality and is now T being extensively mined. The mining of coal there is comparatively light work at present, the seam most valued being a stratum twelve inches thick. -j “ covered with from sixteen inches to twelve feet of loose soil and a kind of clayey shale easily crumbled by the pick. Below this stratum of coal are two others, one fifteen to eighteen inches thick, and the lower one 1 from thirty inches to fonrfeet Between these,of course, there are intervening strata of earth, shale, and, sometimes, sand stone. These lower coal veins are not yet worked much; the quality being' considered inferior,there is not a demand for it, and double or three times the work is required to mine it. Probably coal/is the great wealth of Bourbon, Craw-

ford and Cherokee counties, Kansas, and Vernon, Barton and Jasper counties, Missouri. This field is about 70 miles in extent from north to south by 30 miles east and west, as indicated by the outcrops in the counties above named. It may underlie other portions of both Missouri and Knnsas at greater depth, and probably this system crops out elsewhere both east and west of the country indicated. But to return to a discussion of the soil of southeastern Kansas. Much of that in Bourbon county is a reddish or brown clay; as sticky as taffy when wet; warm, early, generous, productive. Good wheat, oats, rye* corn, potatoes and vines are grown on it after the rocks are removed so that it can be cultivated, if the season is not too dry, and grasshoppers and chinch bugs do not interfere. In the vicinity of Ft. Scott are many miles of stone fence and occasionally substantial stone dwellings, barns, etc., on the farms.

Crawford and Cherokee counties present very much the same general characteristics of soil. Nearly all of both are rolling prairie, of a quality very diversified and irregular. Most of itis ashy gray clay—throe shades of color and three, grades ot productiveness. The darkest is the best and very rich; the lightest, called by the inhabitants white or alkali land, in ordinarily dry seasons is unproductive, the native grass, with which it is clothed in early spring, drying up and withering away by the last of June or middle of July. Neosho and Labette counties, along the Neosho river, contain a tract the soil of which is as deep, as rich, and as productive as any on the

globe. This tract is, or was, covered with a magnificent growth of timber, the prevailing varieties being hickory, black walnut, bur oak, pecan, elm and sycamore. The underbrush includes luxuriant paw paw r , red bud, wahoo, and the like. Clambering over underbrush and to the utmost tops of the tallest trees are Virginia creep 3rs, bittersweet and enormous grapevines. Back from the river and creek bottoms in these two counties the soil is not so good. Gravelly knobs aud much white land abound. Prices of land in this region vary from five fioflaTs an acre up to fifteen, owing to quality, location, payments, and the condition of the

minds of owners, whether contented or disturbed. There may be extra choice tracts near towns, with good improvements—dwellings, barns, fences, hedges, orchards, etc. —for which higher figures are askwd, but to offset these are other “claims” with quite entensive improvements and standing crops, that would be sold very much cheaper. The inhabitants of the five counties named, are, as a class,.very discontented with their condition, and this feeling impresses a visitor unfavorably with the country. The causes that have produced their unhappiness will be apparent before this article closes.

They have a splendid crop, or crops, this year. £orn is extraordinary in places, and will average well; wheat also and oats are a good yield; flax, castor beans, and broom corn were medium crops; potatoes, cabbage, pumpkins and other vegetables are in profusion; the yield of sorghum is enormous. However, money is scarce and prices of produce are very low. Corn is offered for fifteen cents a bushel at the railroad towns without finding buyers. Castor beans command $1 a bushel, flax seed 81.25, oats, twelve to fifteen cents, and potatoes twenty-five to thirty cents. Business is stagnaut, prices of produce are low, and times are dull. ' -v ‘

This year there has been a great deal of sickness in that region. Most of this sickuess was of a malarious nature and very severe. The season was unusually wet, causing all the streams to overflow their banks and inundate the adjacent country, and a rank growth of vegetation was produced everywhere. One travels miles and miles .through grass six to eight feet high, on both of the worn trails as far as the eye can reach, except where claims are broken up and-cultivated in the larger plants

of corn, sorghum, broom corn and castor beans. Ague and fevers were as prevalent this season in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri as they were along the rivers of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois twenty-five years ago. Indeed, as far as information could be obtained from individuals or newst papers, the agne has prevailed throughout both States to a remarkable extent. The type of the disease was severe and stubborn. Quinine, unassisted, was not potent to destroy the effects of malarious poison, and successful physicians had recourse to such a powerful tonic as an addition of sulphuric acid and salts of iron would form. There were many instances where arsenic was also given, before stubborn fevers could be, or were, con. trolled. One doctor said he had been living in the town of Cherokee in Cherokee county for eight years. He was born in New Jersey and had lived in Michigan, lowa and Minnesota, but in neither of those States had he found a locality so

sickly as where he then was. “If a man would prolong his life,” said he, “let him not come to this part of Kansas; or if he is here now, let him move away as soon as possible. It has always been unhealthy here for eight years past, as I have knowledge from personal observation. I know to-day of upwards j of seventy families, in the region where my practice extends, who will move to some other locality as soon as they are well enough. Many of them have made valuable improvements which they would sell for any price bid—but if they can not sell at all, for any money, they will abandon their homes and move away.” But the doctor, at the time he was talking, was himself suffering with an attack of reinittant fever, and spoke with more warmth, perhaps, than if he had not been thus afflicted. How-

ever, it was very sickly in September and October this year, and four years ago the writer saw people shaking with ague there on the fourth day of July. It is also a fact that grave yards grow with as great vigor in Missouri and Kansas as they do in Indiana. Perhaps there are not as many tombstones seen in his enclosures, but Death has located as many “claims” and cultivates them, as extensively there as here, when the ages of the settlements of the respective localities are taken into consideration.

Of the streams of water, it said, some are beautiful and others repugnant. The Neosho river and its tributaries, which pursue a general southeastern direction and empty into the Arkansas, are swift running streams, with gravelly or rocky beds. The waters have a sky blue tint, and are excellent to drink, as the writer had frequent opportunity to prove. The streams that flow northward and northeast —the two Osages, Marmaton and their branches —are, for the most part, sluggish, with channels that frequently support a luxuriant growth of aquatic plants, and whose waters are muddy and of that peculiar cadaverous color of the Missouri river, whose tributaries they all are. Although forbidding to the sight, these waters are not unpalatable nor unhealthy, but are apt to physic for a few days when people first commence to drink of them. These streams all abound with fine fish—cat, bass, and buffalo. Through the winter and early spring months they are freqnepted by vast numbers of ducks, 8 * geese, swan and brant; the lattOr named fowl are mostly white plum aged, though some of them are greyish brown, not nnlike domestic geese. Bordering these streams, where they

Are of any considerable size, as has been observed before, are forests of heavy timber. Some years they produce thousands of bushels of nuts—walnuts, hickorynuts, ' and pecans—of monstrous size and fine flavor. This was the off year and not much shack was borne. Immense custard apples (paw paws) grow down on those rich river bottoms. Did you ever eat a paw paw a real soft, ripe one? If not, it is doubtful if more than two or three mouthfuls cquld be retained on the stomach at one sitting. They ara uot so very positive

in flavor, but there is a quiet, mawkish, insinuating suggestiveness about These salvy-pulped, orchis-shaped drupes that the gorge will rise against on first introduction; after persistent acquaintance, however, people beconie reconciled to them, and when served with sugar and cream there are those who consider them a delicacy as nice as strawberries or other of the fine fruits. Farther back mulberry trees abound, and, on bordering uplands, are extensive groves of persimmon trees, whose fruit in the green state can not be eaten by man or beast, on account of its bitterness and astringency; but when fully matured and thoroughly ripened by frost, it is transformed into a rich, luscious preserve, acceptable to most persons and nearly as fine as dates, which they somewhat resemble. People gather ripe persimmons by the bushel and preserve or make them into butter, in both ot which forms they are said to be excellent. Where persimmons grow there are sometimes hazel bushes, thickets of rank sumac, and other arboreal indications of a rich, deep soil, adapted to the cultivation ot wheat, corn, cotton, or almost any production of, the vegetable kingdom made use of"by man in a civilized state. Up the ravines, that extend from these streams for miles back in the highland prairies, are frequent groves of wild plum-trees fringed with matted masses of gooseberry bushes and low shrubs which, at this time of year and until spring, are covered with loads of small crimson, coral-like berries of no known value for anything, though perhaps birds may eat them when nothing else can be found. As might be expected, such game as squirrels, rabbits, opossums, raccoons and deer, abound in the timber and groves; deer, however, are not very plentiful now, and each succeeding year they become scarcer. Of a clear, frosty morning in the fall But this article, like some of the western streams during a freshet, has extended beyond what should have been its boundaries, and the readbr, if interested or curious, must look in the columns ot next week’s paper for the conclusion of these rambling notes of a twenty days’ ramble.

Dr. T. J. McMillan, of Bradford, White county, Indiana, died last Saturday from the effects of poison supposed to have been taken through mistake. The doctor was a volunteer in the 9th regiment ot Indiana infantry in tHe late war, and was a pleasant gentlemen.