norant of the white men s numbers and resources,
are said to be all for war. If the pale-face will not
come into the buffalo -runs, they will keep the
peace ; if he will build his ranch, dig his well,
and crop his grass, in these runs, the Cheyennes
and the Arappahoes, aided by their brethren of
the Prairie and the hill country, will burn his
shanty and take his scalp.
Such are the rumours that we hear from every
mouth in Kansas. A small party, it is true, affects to
regard the alarm of Leavenworth, Lawrence, and
Wamego, as a panic having little or no foundation ;
partisans of the new route by way of Smoky Hill
Fork, who wish to see it opened and kept open.
They are few in number ; and I do not hear that
any of these heroes propose to settle, as yet,
along the line of road through the Cheyenne
country.
OVERLAND MAIL. 33
Now, as we gather from the mail-agents in
Leaven worth, this is the line along which we are
to go a journey of thirteen hundred miles ; through
a country, the greater part of which has never
been surveyed, through which there is no road,
in which there are many streams and gullies,
but not a single bridge ; a country in which the
hills, the creeks, the rivers, have as yet received
no names, and in which the small military
posts of the United States, themselves only
corrals of logs and planks, lie two hundred miles
apart.
Still, a line along which a mail so magnificent
as that sent off from JSTew York to San Francisco,
not to speak of the thousand inferior cities which
help to feed it, has been running its daily course,
must be at least as safe as the line from Damascus
to Banias. But on our saying this, or something
like this, to a friend in Leavenworth, we learn, to
our surprise, that there has never been a daily mail
running along that line ; that no such thing has
ever yet been attempted ; that there are neither
men nor mules along the road to carry a daily
mail; that, in point of fact, only one waggon, an
empty waggon, has gone out in advance of us;
that no one knows where that empty waggon is,
VOL. I. D
34 NEW AMERICA.
or whether it will arrive in safety beyond the
Plains.
We look at our pistols, and feel the hair on our
polls ; the aspect of affairs is at once tragic and
comic; and the kindly jokes of our friends in Pall
Mall, as to the best way of enjoying a scalping-
knife, are coming rather near and hot. We find,
too, that we are the only passengers booked for the
trip ; so that the number of revolvers coming into
play, in case of a scrimmage with the Cheyennes
and Comanches, in aid of the military escort, seems
to be reduced to two. All our acquaintance in this
city urge us to get more and better arms ; a sug
gestion in which the mail-agents cordially agree.
The new arm of the west, called a Smith-and-
Weston, is a pretty tool ; as neat a machine for
throwing slugs into a man s flesh as an artist in
murder could desire to see. Bowie-knives, and
such -like, being useless to a Britisher who
may have seen, but never practised, the art of
ripping up an adversary s side, like a Livornese and
a Yalentian, we buy a couple of these Smith-and-
Westons, and then pay our fare of five hundred
dollars to Salt Lake. An escort of veterans from
the Potomac, aided by these six-shooters, will
surely scare away all the Cheyennes, Arappahoes,
OVERLAND MAIL. 35
md Sioux, who may be found clamouring about
;he rights of man, especially about the rights of
red men, in the buffalo-runs.
The rail has been laid down so far west as
Wamego the Clear Springs so called from the
fact of there being no water in the village ; and
there we are to join the stage for our long ride;
the stage being an old and much-worn Concord
coach ; a vehicle of a kind unknown in Europe,
though its shapelessness and inconvenience might be
hinted by cutting off the coupe of a French diligence,
and bellying out the rotundo, until it could be
supposed by its proprietor big enough to hold nine
persons. This coach, when we come to it, is jammed
full of mail-bags forty-two hundredweight in all
state despatches, love-letters, orders, bills of ex
change, invoices of account, all sorts of lively and
deadly missiles, the value of which to governor,
maid, clerk, banker, emigrant, and dealer, must be
far beyond price ; and here are five passengers on
the books to take their chances of the road (three
of them being a young woman and two babies),
who, having duly paid their fares and got their
tickets, have a right to be taken on. But this going
on is a thing impossible ; as a glance at the coach
and the mail-bags tells the experienced eye of the
2
36 NEW AMERICA.
Wamego agent. What shall be done? The mail
must go, even though the passengers should have
to wait in Wamego for a month ; and as the
driver is already cracking his whip, and belching
out volleys of oaths, which the lady and her two
babies are obliged to hear (poor things !), the agent
quickly makes up his mind, bids us get aboard
men and revolvers says one sharp word to the
driver, when away we plunge into the dust, leaving
our female fellow-traveller, astonished, protesting,
in the cloud of mud and sand. We look at
each other wonderingly; for in this Paradise
of Women, a petticoat is accustomed to carry all
things before it the best room at an hotel, the
highest place at table, the first seat in a coach,
in spite of your prior right. Ha ! the revolvers
have done it. As we are dashing off, we look
out of window for the troops who are to be our
companions in the Cheyenne country. None are
in sight ! " The escort," says the agent, " will
join you at Junction City, if there should seem
to be any need; you must consider the mail as
starting from Junction City ; " and as he courteously I
waves his hand, we roll away into the dust.
In a couple of hours we pass Fort Biley ; in
two or three more we are at Junction City ; a city
OVERLAND MAIL. 37
of six wooden shanties, where we alight to sup off
hot cake, tea, and tomatoes ; and about an hour
later, in the midst of <a pleasant chat with the
landlord of our hostelry, we hear the driver s
cry, " On board ! " Bushing out into the night,
our belts swung round us, our pistols loaded
for the fray, we find that our big Concord coach
has been exchanged for a light prairie waggon,
smaller in size, frailer in build, without a door,
with very bad springs, and with canvas blinds for
windows. Into this waggon, the letter-bags have
been forced by an ingenious violence, the art of
which is only known in the western country, with
so neat a finish that it would seem impossible to
insert two human beings between the mail-bags
and the wall. But, in time, by doubling our legs
across each other, by craning our necks, by slinging
our elbows into straps, the feat is accomplished ;
the two human beings afore-named having been
persuaded, much against the grain, to wriggle
themselves between the bags, under a promise that
the said bags will shake down in a few minutes
so as to give plenty of room. This is not easy,
we suggest to each other, since we have our own
small litter of pistols, books, maps, brandy-flasks,
shawls, night-caps, potted meats, cigar-cases, sticks,
38 NEW AMERICA.
umbrellas, and the like, about our feet. We begin
to fear, that unless the load shall happen to shake
down considerably, we may chance to have a bad
week of it.
But see, this fellow is about to start, though
the escort is not in sight !
Whew ! We speak to the agent : " Well," says
he, in effect , " the officer in charge will not lend us
any troops ; his command is very low just now ;
the country is disturbed by Indians in his front
and flank ; he has enough to do to hold his own
in the post. But," the good-natured agent adds,
for our comfort, " you will find the road all right ;
some troops went up the Plains yesterday ; you will
pass them a-head ; good-bye ! " And we are off.
The truth now flashes on our minds like a
revelation :
We are the escort !
Not a soul goes out with the mail, either now or
through the journey, except the boy who drives the
mules (changed every forty or fifty miles on the road) ;
no escort, no mail agent, nobody save ourselves.
I cannot say that in my travels, I have ever seen
the fellow of this prairie mail. In the most dan
gerous district crossed by traveller and trader
west of Chinese Tartary, the New York and St.
OVERLAND MAIL. 39
Louis people trust the most important mail leav
ing any city in the world, excepting that from
London, without a guard. No one doubts that
the Cheyennes and Sioux are now holding council
on these Plains, even if they have not as yet gone
out upon the war-path ; nay, that they have given
notice, after their Indian manner, of an intention
to stop the road ; yet, the mail is going into their
buffalo-runs, in spite of all warnings, without a
single guard, even such an old fogie as used to
blow his horn and shoulder his blunderbuss on
Hounslow Heath.
Perhaps I am forgetting the confidence which
they place in their English guard. They know
that we are armed ; they feel a reasonable cer
tainty that we know how to use our tools. " The
road is a little rough," says one of the stock-
keepers as we roll from his station into the black
midnight and the unknown prairie ; " but the go
vernment will do nothing for us, until it has been
roused by a great disaster; they care nothing
for a few lives, especially for the lives of poor
teamsters and drivers." One passing friend rather
hopes that we may be scalped, as he thinks that
such an event might create a pleasant and pro
fitable sensation in New York.
40 NEW AMEKICA.
We have paid five hundred dollars for escorting
the United States mail to Salt Lake. It is a high
price, but the privilege might be worth the cost,
if we had a mind to use the facilities which fall
about our feet and court us to see them. This
mail is wholly at our mercy. Six nights and days
we are shut up with our pistols and the United
States correspondence ; our sole companion being
the boy outside, who cannot see into the waggon
when the flaps are down. In one place a bag
falls out of the waggon, and would certainly
be left behind on the plain, but that we call
the driver to stop and pick it up. In another
place one of the bags bursts open, when a stream oi
letters comes flowing about our feet. We have
only to help ourselves ; read what we like, pocket
what we like. Might not the secrets of a single
letter be worth, in some hands, more than the five
hundred dollars we have paid to guard them ?
41
CHAPTEE IV.
THE PRAIRIES.
OF all the States and Territories which still exist
on paper, Kansas may be described as the Prairie
State. Nebraska, Colorado, and the Indian ter
ritory, are covered by prairies ; great grassy
plains, not level, as many persons think, but
rolling uplands, rising from the river to the
mountains in a series of ascending billows, always
of gentle grade, often of enormous sweep. But
Kansas is beyond dispute the region in which
these plains display themselves on the largest
scale, and with their points most perfect.
On the old maps, which show the natural
history of each section of the Great Eepublic, the
district now called Kansas will be found figured
by a buffalo, as Nebraska is marked by an ante
lope, Iowa by a beaver, Utah by a bear. Across
these Plains, up from the Indian territory on
42 NEW AMERICA.
the south,, come the wild and multitudinous herds
on which the Cheyennes, the Arappahoes, the
Comanches, and the Kiowas feed.
For two hundred miles westward from the
Missouri, the plains are green with trees, most of
all so along the lines of the Kansas river and its
many creeks and inlets. The wood is hickory, wal
nut, oak, and water-elm. Maple and chestnut are
not found in the plains. The land is alive with
shrubs and flowers ; among which flourish wild
marigolds, shamrock, water-lily (in the pools), rosin-
weed, stink- weed, and sun-flowers. These sun
flowers of the West are not the tawny gauds of
our cottage gardens ; big and brazen bachelors, flour
ishing on a single stalk ; but little golden flowers,
clustering in bunches, and, like our buttercups,
numberless as the stars of heaven. In many parts,
the prairie is alive with their golden light. A
white frame house on this side of the river
called a ranch peeps out here and there from
beneath the foliage, having its green blinds, its bit
of garden, its sheep-fold. Herds of horses can be
seen on the rolling plateau. Here you have a
drove of cattle, there a long waggon train. Anon
we pass an Indian village, where some families of
Delawares, sent out from those Atlantic forests
THE PRAIRIES. 43
now occupied by the quays and palaces of Dover,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have taken a fitful
and precarious root in the soil. These Delawares
have long since buried the hatchet, put on panta
loons, forgotten the use of war-paint. Some of
them make farmers ; living on friendly terms with
their pale neighbours ; even marrying their sons
into the families of whites. We pass a Shawnee
village, of which the same things may be said.
White men s ranches stand among them ; dangerous
neighbours to these natives ; for the Pale-face,
finding his way through the cracks and crannies of
Indian character, making himself first useful, then
formidable, to the tribe, commonly ends the con
nexion with them by becoming lord and owner of
their lands.
The air is warm and sweet ; a perfume of prairie
flowers mingling with the distant snows of the
sierras. The sky is intensely blue, with none of
that golden haze which frets the eye in our own
southern landscapes. A patch of cloud, intense
and vivid in its whiteness, dots and relieves the
grand monotony of azure, so as to combine in one
field of view the distinctive beauties of a Sicilian
and an English sky.
As we draw away from the river, the wood-
44 NEW AMERICA.
land scenery disappears ; the country opens to the
right and left ; the plains swell languidly into greater
breadths of upland. About the creeks and pools,
for the most part dry on the surface, there are still
some shrubs ; the wild convolvulus is common ;
also the Virginian creeper ; more than ah 1 others
a plant called the rosin-weed. This rosin-weed
appears to be Nature s choice in the way of ver
dure and adornment. When the ground is either
cleared by fire, or cut by the prairie breaker, the
rosin-weed disappears ; the fire-weed springs up
in its place, and dies in its turn after two or
three crops, in some places after one crop ; when
this second weed is succeeded by the tickle-grass.
(P.S. Don t let the tickle-grass get up your legs
for it seems to be alive ; to know you don t
like it and to creep up your pantaloons the
faster you fret and worry.) After this grass come
three or four species of wild grasses ; and after
these fertilizers sown by nature have dropped
their decaying blades into the ground, the farmer
may come with his rake and his seed to a soil
made ready for his use.
Driving on night and day (as men must drive
who have charge of an imperial mail), we begin to
leave all trace of man and his arts, save one, be-
THE PRAIRIES. 45
hind. A prairie hen clucks in the wild sage ; a
rattlesnake coils among the sun-flowers ; a wolf
steals noiselessly along the road ; dead mules, dead
horses, dead oxen, strew the path, on which the
carrion crow, the raven, and the wolf, find food ;
these white horns and skeletons of man s servants
being often the only traces of his ever having found
his way across the Plains.
By daring, ingenuity and patience, the Western
trader has pushed a way for himself across this dif
ficult tract of land ; making an opening for trade and
travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
He has done this feat as a private man, without
help from the State, without cheers from any
learned body, at a cost of blood and money which
can never be counted upon earth ; and for this
reason : the Western man thinks nothing of blood,
not much of treasure, when he regards them as
being invested in a business that will pay. Hold
ing his life in his hand, this reckless, jovial fellow,
swearing overmuch, brimming with help when
help is of use, is careless of blood, either his
own or yours, far beyond an ^Arab, almost
beyond a Chinese. This path through the prairie
has been paved by him, again and again, with
bones : but the trace of his passage, of his
46 NEW AMERICA.
suffering, dies away out of sight with the
autumnal flowers. Nature is here too strong
for man to do more than throw a trail upon
her landscape, which may show itself for a
day in the bunch-grass, among the grey sand,
and then vanish from sight like the track of a
ship at sea. The prairie is not man s home. Even
if he had time to plant and reap it, he could
hardly grow a blade of grass, a stalk of Indian
corn, on these open flats, where myriads of locusts
clatter through the air, devouring in their hunger
every green leaf and twig. We ride past a
lonely ranch, near which the daring and hopeful
tenant had planted a field with corn, for his
winter food. Look at the poor man s harvest!
Legions of locusts are upon his crop ; and every
ear that should have made him bread has been
picked away.
In . these uplands, Nature is lord and king.
Snipes and plovers abound ; blackbirds, carrion
crows, ravens, and vultures are also seen. Flowers
are still common ; most of all, the dwarf sun
flower, which is sown so thickly through the land
scape as to give it a shimmer of burning gold.
The dwarf sun-flower is, in fact, the prairie flower ;
lighting up the face of Nature everywhere in our
THE PRAIRIES. 47
route, from the Missouri river to the Great Salt
Lake ; in some parts growing low arid stunted,
the stalk not a foot long, the flower not higher
than a common marigold, in others rising ten or
twelve feet higft, with clusters of flowers, each flower
as big as a peony. Ants are toiling in the ground ;
the little prairie dogs comedians of the waste
sit crowing on their mounds of earth, until
we drive close up to them, when they utter a
quick laugh, and with a shout of mockery, plunge
into their holes, head downwards, disappearing from
our sight with a last merry wag of their tails.
Owls, prairie-dogs, and rattle-snakes, live on the
most friendly terms with each other ; the owls
and snakes dwelling in the prairie-dogs holes, and
sometimes, I fancy, eating the dogs when they
happen to be short of food. It may only be a super
stition ; but the teamsters and drivers across the
Plains have a fixed belief that flesh of the prairie-
dog is poisonous in a peculiar way, and that men
who eat of it become insane. Once, in a stress of
hunger, I was obliged to kill one.
" Lord ! " cries the boy at the ranch, " you will
never eat that, sir."
" Why not? I am hungry enough to eat a
Cheyenne."
48 NEW AMERICA.
" Well, sir," says the lad, " we prairie folks
consider the owl, the rattle-snake, and the prairie-
dog to be all of a kith and kin, the Devil s own
spawn, and that anybody who eats them will go
mad."
" Put him in the pan ; I must take my chance."
The flesh proved to be delicious, with something
like the taste of squirrel ; and on seeing me suck
the savoury bone, the prairie-boy instantly seized
and devoured a leg. I hope the teamsters and
drivers will continue in their want of faith as to
the wholesomeness of prairie-dogs ; for the antics
of these little animals should make them dear to
every man who has to cross these Plains, in which
the supply of comedy is extremely scant.
After passing Fort Ellsworth a collection of
wooden shanties, in which lie a hundred men, not
very well armed (we hear), and careful to keep
their feet within bounds, leaving the Chey-
ennes and Arappahoes alone we have before us
a stretch of two hundred and twenty miles of
dangerous country, without a single post for its
protection ; a country in which there . is no town,
no camp, no ranch, except the log-stables, now
being built for the overland mules. We are alone
with Nature and the imperial mail. Around us,
THE PRAIRIES. 49
have many signs that the Cheyennes and Arap-
lahoes are hovering nigh ; at times we catch visible
evidence of a scout on some distant ridge of the
Smoky Hill, and see the curl of blue smoke from
some neighbouring creek.
We are now, between Big Creek and Big
Timber station, in the very heart of the wild game
country ; a country of long, low, rolling hills,
covered with a short sweet grass bunch-grass
on which the buffalo loves to feed. We have
ceased firing at rattle-snakes and prairie chickens ;
reserving our cartridges for the nobler uses of
self-defence ; though we are tempted, now and
then, to try a shot at some elk, or antelope, or
black-tailed deer. The great game being buffaloes,
against the tough hides of which our small six-
shooters are of no avail, we sit quietly in our
waggon watching the herds troop by ; in lines, in
companies, in droves, in armies, the black and
shaggy beasts go thundering in our front ; some
times from north to south, sometimes from south
to north ; but always scudding in our front, and
always across our line of march. The plains are
teeming with life ; most of all with buffalo bulls
and cows. For forty hours we have now had them
always in our sight ; thousands on thousands, tens
VOL. I. E
50 NEW AMERICA.
of thousands after tens of thousands ; a countless
host of untamed animals ; all of them fit for human
food ; enough, we should think, to stock Arappahoe,
Comanche, and Cheyenne wigwams to the end of
time. Once or twice the driver tries a shot ; but
fear of the red-skins commonly checks his wish
to fire.
This buffalo, which is the white man s sport,
is also the red man s food ; and a Cheyenne
warrior cannot be made to see why a Pale-face
should come into his country and destroy th
buffalo for the sake of a little amusement. A
white man who has to kill buffalo to live, the
Indian can comprehend, though he may have
to suffer in estate by that white man s rifle ;
but a man who shoots buffalo for sport, having
no wish to eat it, is a mystery to which any red-skin
would gladly put an end by tomahawk and scalping-
knife.
As we ascend the Plains, a series of rolling
steppes, in no part level for a dozen miles, the sun
grows fiercer overhead, the sands hotter beneath
our feet. Snakes, lizards, locusts, swarm on the
ground and in the air ; the heat is terrible ; some
times, in the breathless noon, reminding me of the
Jordan valley. Water is scarce and bad, and the
THE PRAIRIES. 51
dry, hot fever of external nature creeps into and
corrupts your blood.
The fourth day of our journey on the plains is
one of tropical warmth. That short, sweet grass
on which the buffalo loves to feed, is now behind
us in the lower plains, where moisture, though
it may be scant, is not unknown, as it seems to
be here for many a league on league. Our path is
strewn with skeletons of oxen, mules, and horses ;
waste of the life that helps to keep up an overland
trade from the river to the sea. Eavens and
wolves are seen fattening on these remains of
mule and ox ; tame enough to be hardly
scared from their meal by the crashing of our
waggon- wheels through the burning sand. A
golden haze, the effect of heat, envelopes the
earth, and the mirage tantalizes our parching
throats with a promise of water, never to be
reached. A stillness as of death is round about
us. In the west we see a little cloud, not bigger,
when we see it first, than a prairie-dog ; anon it
! is the size of a fox, of a buffalo, of a mountain ;
in a few minutes it has covered the sky with one
black and sulphurous pall, out of which the
lightnings begin to leap and dance.
A flash comes through the still and silent
E 2
52 NEW AMERICA.
air, like a gun-shot, suddenly, with a sharp su
prise. It is followed by a wail of wind and rai
which lifts the sand from the ground into the
and drives it into the canvas flaps of our mountai
waggon, splashing us with mud and mire. No
can keep the deluge out ; and in a few minu
we are drenched and smothered. Four or fiv
hours that storm of sand and rain drives heavil
against us. Two or three times the mules stan
still in fear ; turn their backs to the heavenly fire,
refusing to go forward under any encouragement
of either voice or whip. Were they not fastened
to the coach, they would fly before the tempest;
bolting for their lives until the hurricane should
have drooped and died. Being chained to the
waggon, they can only stand and moan. When