The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1874-07-17
FROM COLORADO.

This is the way a correspondent
of the Paola Spirit writes:
DENVER, Col, June 2S, 1874.
To the Editor Of the Western Spirit:
! promised to write you letter
or 1 doubt very much whether ]
should have done so. But let me
begin my long story. We left
Paola Wednesday noon and reach
ed Leavenworth that evening.
While in Leavenworth we visited
the Catholic Cathedral, q magnifi-
cent building. The outside looks
solid and heavy andis built in the
Doric style of architecture, while
the inside is airy and light with
the more delicate and beautiful
Corinshian order. The organ !
did not hear but judge from the
size and the number of pipes that
its tones well fill the mighty domuS
domint, as the,building is christen-
ed. And such pictures, such fres-
Goes of angels, of Moses and the
burning bush, of Peter and Jesus,
of Adam and Eve, of sacrificial
lambs, bullocks and doves, and of
the Holy Mother and child Jesus
We left Leavenworth Saturday
morning and by nightfall were past
Junction City. The crops look
ed hardly even with those of
Miami county, excepting wheat
which looked better than any in
Miami county. Then we woke up
at4 o'clock Sunday morning to see
the Great American Desert. We
saw it. Forty years ago the
strip from Kansas City to the
Rocky Mountains was the desert.
The newspaper men Of late years
have had terrible itching to
scratch off from the map any such
word as desert in connection with
either Kansas or Colorado.
wheat and potatoes and all
kind of trees fiourished they say.
And the Great American Desert
is the future grazing ground of
the nation. "Tell the people of
Miami county for me that the
newspaper men Clearing the fra
ternity in Paola) are a fraud"
Kansas is 400 miles long. 1t is
safe to say that the western half Is
a blasted, bleak, barren waste.
And Colorado-bah! Grazing
ground of the nation indeedi Oc-
cupied according to my observa-
ton by 20 or 80 buffaloes, so or
100 prairie dogs, three rattlesnAkes
and perhaps a dozen antelopes,
and two or three lost emigrants,
no trees for full 450 miles, no
water, no grass more than two
inches high, no coal, no mines, no
industries ofany kind, except that
Of gathering the bones of poor
starved bufTales and frozen Texas
steers; no stone, no scenery, no
nothing but great level stretches
of sand, with a little short grass
on it; plains for hundreds of miles
lowered with cactus and grasshop-
pers; sand rivers, where maybe
there was water once at the time
of the deluge, for instancel J, swells
Iof land that tire the eye, a mo-
notony only relieved by mirage
and dead buffalo bones and horns
but grazing groundl The editor
that started that idea ought to
have a free pass to the Sahara to
write that up for the benefit OF the
Bedouins. We went close to the
Smoky Hill fork of the Kaw
where there was a bed of sand I0C
feet wide and banks 4 to 10 feei
high, but not a bucket Of qoGte1
anywhere in the river or out of Il
for forty miles, except at railway
stations. Talk about such {
, country as that being the 9fgraz
/, ing ground of the nationr r AND
! the guide books say: There il
no doubt about the fertility Of tn
soil at Salina," and / saw no COR
anywhere near there over a foo
: high and no wild prairie grasl
there over four inches, and Thei
lone gets into the western half o
Kansas and the eastern half o
Colorado, '.the high and delight
4 full arid climate does not permi
; enough of ssthe sweet nutrition
grasses 70 fatten the averag'
grasshopper. If man has goo.
) farm in Miami county, he'd bette
s keep It for all have seen since
left there. JAYHAWKER.