Omaha daily bee., 1874-04-29

American, and bears, though far
away from Plymouth Rock, the in-
dellible stamp of religions yenera-
ton engraved upon American char
acter by the Pilgrim Fathers. i
Following the rapid settlement OF
this valley its exports have increased
I'm a sort of geometric ratio. Take,
for instance, the shipments of wheat
from two of the most prominent
points. Fremont, a city OF about
5000 inhabitants, 40 miles from
Omaha; and Columbus, so miles
west, with. a population of about
1000. The former city shipped
about 30 car loads of wheat three
wears ago; two years ago 400,
the last year nearly 100 car loads,
or over half a million bushels. Col
umbus shipped but IL a loads the
first year, III tha second and last
fall and winter over 900 a loads.
Other products have increased in
the same proportion, and all Will
continue to increase in nearly the
same ratio for several years to come.
1t il safe to estimate the ann6eS
wheat crop of this valley at ten MIL
lion bushels, when each quarter Sec
has an inhabitant, which cannot be
far away.
From Omaha to Fremont the
U. p. lands have all been sold,
but near the latter place a few loca-
tons may be secured; and the guam
tity Of unsold land gradually in
ease as you go west by North
Bend, a delightful little village,
where an example a be seen OF
how great a grove may be grown In
this country i'm ten years. A grove
of cottonwoods planted here about
ten years ago, now stand sixty 1eet
i'm height, and twenty to thirty
inches i'm diameter at the ground.
Near Schuyler, a beautiful village
adorned with numerous young trees,
the growth of only three or four
years, the quantity of railroad land
unsOld begins to increase sensibly,
and there may be a few quarter Sec
tions of government land twenty or
twenty-five miles from the railroad.
Near Columbus there are large
tracts of the grandest land, but it
is now being rapidly sold. Farther
west, one hundred and fifty miles
from Omaha, near Grand Island, a
city of 200 inhabitants and rapidly
increasing, whose people are just
now exerting themselves strongly,
and with f~attering prospects of sue
cess, to build a railroad southwark
to connect with the st. Joe & Den
yer and give them access to st. Louis
and southern markets, there is a
greater increase in the quantity of
land for sale, as also of government
land not taken up; and as you go
west from here, the quantity in
creases as the country is more and
more recently settled,
Forty-five miles from Grand
Island you come to the new city of
Kearney, the meeting place of two
great railroads that stretch away
from the Missouri River on a race
for the West.
Land, more land, and room for
thousands, as you go Westward be-
yOnd Plum Creek, a town of a hum
dred houses, built in n month last
summer, to Cozad in swaddling
clothes, plated and named this
spring. You can count here eight
or ten dwellings on the plat and
forty or fifty new farm houses On the
prairie around, where, ON the first
day of February you might have
looked In vain I'VE the broad rolling
expansea as far as thee could reach,
till land sank away beneath the
concave sky for other evidence of
human eXistancs, than the circling
band of railway and its double row
of telegraph poles, dwindling down
in the distance till mingled and
blended it takes the appearance of a
closely boarded fence.
West of here you are out of the
great waves and in the surf of inn
migration,
North Platte, 391 miles from Oma-
ha, at the junction of the two prin-
cipal branches of the great Platte
River, which here spreads to 400
yards i'm width, is a flourishing city
of about 1000 inhabitants and the
center of a large community Of
grazers and cattle herders. Here,
instead of bushels of grain, We hear
the number of head of cattle
spoken of.
We have assembled an inclined
plane 800 miles long till we are 2, 700
feet above the e and nearly 1900
above Omaha. But, contrary to the
assumed natural laws of tempera-
ture, have come up into a warmer
climate and arrived in a region
rarely visited by snow; where cattle
Craze the year round and come out
in the spring i'm good order with no
other feed than the rich buffalo
grass which covers the land.
Here there is land, whole counties
of it north, west and south without
holders, untitled, yet tillable and
rich. oh, you laborers upon hill
sides, you delivers among stones,
and you wOod-chOpping, root
pulling jewellers among swamps and
rocks, and on the mountains of the
VostCfu Suites anu SdildudS why
will you work and wait year
after year with no results, building
stump fences, stone walls and log
piles, and burning brush to clear a
little poor land, starving ten or
twenty years, dependent upon your
more fortunate neighbor for days
work wherewith to make the year
ends meet, before the land will
support you, when the fairest face
of Gods great creation smiles
toward you saying, "kiss me once
with a plOw, and l will reward you
with an hundred fold i'm the fairest
crops?" Why will you spend a
whole lifetime i'm the vain endeavor
to make that cold sterile hillside
one-half as smooth or productive as
nature made the land which the
Government will give you here,
and fail at last? DoN.