Buffalo Land. William Edward Webb
and its brethren's against it. I refer to the pitiful remnant of the once great Delawares. From the shores of the Atlantic they have steadily retreated before civilization, marking their path westward by constant conflicts with other races of red men. The nation in its eastern forests once numbered thousands of warriors. Now, three hundred miserable survivors are hastening to extinction by way of their Kansas reservation.
"A number of their best warriors have been employed as scouts by the government, when administering well merited chastisement to other murdering bands. The Delawares, I have often thought, are like blood-hounds on the track of the savages of the plains. They take fierce delight in scanning the ground for trails and the lines of the streams for camps. There is something strangely unnatural in the wild eyes of these Ishmaelites, as they lead the destroyers against their race, and assist in blotting it from the face of the continent. Themselves so nearly joined to the nations known only in history, it is like a plague-stricken man pressing eagerly forward to carry the curse, before he dies, to the remainder of his people."
The valleys of the Saline, Solomon, and Smoky Hill, as we passed them in rapid succession, seemed very rich and were already thickly dotted with houses. This is one of the best cattle regions of the state, and vast herds of the long-horned Texan breed covered the prairies. We were informed that they often graze throughout the entire winter. As early in the spring as the grass starts sufficiently along the trail from Texas to Kansas, the stock dealers of the former State commence moving their immense herds over it. The cattle are driven slowly forward, feeding as they come, and reach the vicinity of the Kansas railroads when the grass is in good condition for their summer fattening. As many as five hundred thousand head of these long horns have been brought into the State in a single season. Some are sold on arrival and others kept until fall, when the choicest beeves are shipped East for packing purposes, or into Illinois for corn feeding. The latter is the case when they are destined eventually for consumption in Eastern markets, grass-fed beef lacking the solid fatness of the corn-fed, and suffering more by long transportation.
This very important trade in cattle, when fully developed, will probably be about equally divided between southern and central Kansas, each of which possesses its peculiar advantages for the business. While the valley of the Arkansas has longer grass, and more of it, the dealers in the Kaw region claim that their "feed" is the most nutritious. My own opinion, carefully formed, is that both sections are about equally good, and that the whole of western Kansas, with Colorado, will yet become the greatest stock-raising region of the world. The climate is peculiarly favorable. Two seasons out of three, on an average, cattle and sheep can graze during the winter, without any other cover than that of the ravines and the timber along the creeks.
The herders who manage these large bodies of cattle are a distinctive and peculiar class. We saw numbers of them scurrying along over the country on their wild, lean mustangs, in appearance a species of centaur, half horse, half man, with immense rattling spurs, tanned skin, and dare-devil, almost ferocious faces. After an extensive acquaintance with the genus Texan, and with all due allowance for the better portion of it, I must say, as my deliberate judgment, that it embraces a larger number of murderers and desperadoes than can be found elsewhere in any civilized nation. A majority of these herders would think no more of snuffing out a life than of snuffing out a candle. Texas, in her rude solitude, formerly stretched protecting arms to the evil doers from other states, and to her these classes flocked. She offered them not a city but a whole empire of refuge.
Just beyond Brookville, two hundred miles from the eastern border of Kansas, our road commenced ascending the Harker Bluffs, a series of sandstone ridges bordering on the plains.
On our left, Mushroom Rock was pointed out to us, a huge table of stone poised on a solitary pillar, and strangely resembling the plant from which it is named. As the professor informed us, we were on the eastern shore of a once vast inland ocean, the bed of which now forms the plains. Sachem thought the rock might be a petrified toad-stool, on a scale with the gigantic toads which hopped around in the mud of that age of monsters. The professor thought it was fashioned by the waters, in their eddyings and washings.
Subsequent examinations showed this entire region to be one of remarkable interest to the geologist. A few miles east of Mushroom Rock, near Bavaria, as we learned from the conductor, human foot-prints had been discovered in the sandstone. The professor, who had long ascribed to man an earlier existence upon earth than that given him by geology, was greatly excited, and at his earnest request, when the down train was met, we returned upon it to Bavaria.
MUSHROOM ROCK,
On Alum Creek, near Kansas Pacific R. R.—From a Photograph.
INDIAN ROCK, on Smoky Hill River, Kansas—From a Photograph.
That place we found to consist of two buildings, each serving the double purpose of house and store, the track running between them. Two sandstone blocks, each weighing several hundred pounds, lay in front of one of the stores, and there, sure enough, impressed clearly and deeply upon their surface were the tracks of human feet. They had been discovered by a Mr. J. B. Hamilton on the adjacent bluffs.
There was something weird and startling in this voice from those long-forgotten ages—ages no less remote than when the ridge we were standing upon was a portion of a lake shore. The man who trod those sands, the professor informed us, perished from the face of the earth countless ages before the oldest mummy was laid away in the caves of Egypt; and yet people looked at the shriveled Egyptian, and thought that they were holding converse with one who lived close upon the time of the oldest inhabitant. They wrested secrets from his tomb, and called them very ancient. And now this dweller beside the great lakes had lifted his feet out of the sand to kick the mummy from his pedestal of honor in the museum, as but a being of yesterday, in comparison with himself.
This discovery was soon afterward extensively noticed in the newspapers, and the specimens are now in the collection made by our party at Topeka. It is but fair to say that a difference of opinion exists in regard to these imprints. Many scientific men, among whom is Professor Cope, affirm that they must be the work of Indians long ago, as the age of the rock puts it beyond the era of man, while others attribute them to some lower order of animal, with a foot resembling the human one. For my own part, after careful examination, I accept our professor's theory, that the imprints are those of human feet. The surface of the stone has been decided by experts to be bent down, not chiseled out. Science not long ago ridiculed the primitive man, which it now accepts. It is not strange, therefore, that science should protest against its oldest inhabitant stepping out from ages in which it had hitherto forbidden him existence.
We also found on the rocks fine impressions of leaves, resembling those of the magnolia, and gathered a bushel of petrified walnuts and butternuts. There were no other indications whatever of trees, the whole country, as far as we could see, being a desolate prairie.
"Gentlemen," said the professor, "as surely as you stand on the shore of a great lake, which passed away in comparatively modern times, science stands on the brink of important revelations. We have here the evidence of the rocks that man existed on this earth when the vast level upon which you are about to enter was covered by its mass of water. The waves lapped against the Rocky Mountains on the west, and against the ridges on which you are standing, upon the east. From previous explorations, I can assure you that the buffalo now feed over a surface strewn with the remains of those monsters which inhabited the waters of the primitive world, and the grasses suck nutriment from the shells of centuries. Geology has held that man did not exist during the time of the great lakes. I assert that he did, gentlemen, and now an inhabitant of that period steps forward to confirm my position. This man walked barefooted, and yet the contour of one of the feet, so different in shape from that of any wild people's of the present day, shows that it had been confined by some stiff material, like our leather shoes. The appearance of the big toe is especially confirmatory of this. I would call your attention, gentlemen, to the block which contains companion impressions of the right and left foot. The latter is deep, and well defined, every toe being separate and perfect. The former is shallow, and spread out, with bulged-up ridges of stone between each toe. These are exactly the impressions your own feet would make, on such