The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1877-08-04
SKYWARD JOURNEYINGS.

BY HENRY KING.

ors to the Rocky Mountains.
BY HENRY KING.
Prepared at Request of State Editorial Asso-
citation.
Our President had talented nose, to begin
with; and so we made our trip to the noun
tains in juno, when the air was cordial and
filed with fragrance. The route selected lay
across Kansas, enthusiastically from Leav-
enworth, along the old-time trails of the ex-
plorers and traders, the troops of soldiery
and the bands of eager argonauts-in palace
cars, mind you. through thriving towns. pas
splendid distances of growing grain. To re-
fleet moment was to make 1t seem mira
Gle. The presence of civilization has not yet
removed the gloss and odor of newness from
every thing, so recently has the sod been
turned, and the cabins built, and the trees set
out. and the children turned loose among the
marigolds and the gooseberry bushes. The
artificial Joins so closely with the natural
that it is difficult to tell where the one ends
and the other begins; and somehow you can
not escape the impression that there is q
touch of unreality about it all-it looks SO like
the rapid sOrcery of some tabled summers
night you used to read about In the days
when life was a dream to You instead of n
battle.
With all its freshness, however, and its
mOnotony of levelness and Quietness, the VAL
ley of the Arkansas is in reality a region Of
point of fact, its occupation antedates the
landing at Plymouth Rock, for the Spaniartls,
under Coronado, penetrated it from Mexico IS
early as the spring of Discover three fourths
of a century before the coming of the Pill
grims-reporting it to be a land of mighty
plains and many heaths, smooth and weari-
great herds of crooked backed oxen," as
they called the buffalOes. Then. in l7l9, be.
fore Washington was bOrn-Or our own ven.
cradle Isaac EatOn-the French Dutisne, with
n little army, marched through it from the
southeast. and on northward for n hundred
miles, in search of gold. In the autumn
name goes forever upward with Pike's
Peak, Travelled leisurely along the river,
where he saw a herd of wild horses" some
indeed, of all colors;" and where he found
and described all the smaller animals pecu-
liar to the plains in our own time. Speaking
be only possible to introduce a limited pop
ulation." This, however, he considered "a
great advantage to the United States" mas
some certain limits, and thereby insure the
continuance of the Union" l wish Pike
could come back, now, to see how much
there, and TO learn that sthe rambling in
stinct', OF our people has not been stayed
sat the borders OF, the Missouri" but has
gone go on to the Pacific, and set an iron zone
the end ofit-as a sign and a pledge of the
security of the Union. ~
In 1875, Major Sibley, inventor of that bell
shaped abomination, the sibley tent, was
sent out by the Government to survey and
establish wagon road from the Missouri to
Santa Fe, and the result was the celebrated
santa re trailEsthe only nayigabie stream in
commerce which was prophecy of the great
railroad that is now developing the valley of
the Arkansas in such a wonderful way. That
was theyear the Osages coded this valley to
the whites the same year that La Fayette
was Toasted in ST. Louis, then a town not as
large as our present Topeka. Two years later,
ms nj rfNr-fh fol flhn Qvpd Tpnl
1895, Col. Henry Dodge, U. S. A., led an eXpe
dition from thence to the mountains, return
ing through the Arkansas Valley over almost
exactly the line afterwards adopted by the
railroad, and leaving behind him the Fort
Dodge of to-day to recall his name and his
work to the Kansas editors, and to suggest
there and who is now Mt Fort
Riley--a soldier of well earned laurels, and
the author of the best book ever written
The first overland party for Oregon went
through the valley in the summer of 1899. This
party, numbering fourteen men, was from
Peoria, Illinois, the home of Bob lngersoll;
and an account of the trip, written by one
Farnham, was published in London in 1S43 l
have q copy of this book, a thin volume, in
board covers, and it is as rich in incident and
description as one of SCOTS novels. 1t speaks
of the Arkansas "that American Nile,'
with water so sweet that some of the men
furious wind storms were encountered; there
were exciting chases after elk and
and for some days, il is stated, |
on either side of the Santa Fe trail, |
as far as the eye could reach, a distance of at |
least ID miles, immense herds of buffalo SO
thickly covered the country "that when |
viewed from height, it scarcely afforded a
sight of square league of its surface"
Similar reports were made by the writer's who |
went across the valley with Kearney's Army |
Of the West" from Leavenworth to Santa Fe |
in lSi6-not in 1874 as stated in the ANNALS |
Of Kansas" and by Lieut.. Emory, who made |
a military reconnaissance from Leavenworth |
@ San Diego in the same year, lsi6-not in
lSiS az given in the "Annals." And the story |
that Parsons tells of what he and his fellow |
kansans of the first gold hunting trip to
Pike's Peak saw and experienced does not
differ from these others.
of course, our excursionists thought and
talked of all these things, over their sand
wiches and soda-water, looking out of the car |
windows into the june sunshine. For ours
was party of editors, You knOw-with Il few |
invited outsidersto keep the thing from being
too aristocratic. We traced the probable line |
which Coronado followed, and wondered why
he didn't stay in Kansas and 60 to stock rails
ing. We gazed across the fertile expanse
which Dutisne must have marched over, and
thought what a fool he was to wander up to-
wards Nebraska in quest of uncertain gold
when here was such a chance for "hOme-
steads.r We recalled Pixies opinion of
IL the country snd ptea his
meml,ering that he was dead, and that he
died in the very shadow Of our imperiled flag
at York, i'm 1918, we drank to his memory in
effective silence-at the suggestion of an Able
Guest from Chicago. We caught a starlight
glimpse of Pawnee Rock, where may yet be
spelled the names of those who cut them
there thirty years ago and more; we passed
the Great Bend, where +. Y. Aubrey, who was
afterwards shot by a former kansan, is sup
posed to have crossed the Arkasnas on his
noted horseback ride of 800 miles in four
days, from Santa Fe to Westport; we saw
Fort Dodge, in the distance, with train of six
mule wagons headed towards it with supplies
in real army fashion; We halted at Larned,
where Farnham's party ealnped in that other
June so long ago; and finally, when we had
passed the State line, and as the sun was GO
ing down in softened glow of crimson and
orange, there came into our view the site of
:" Bent's Fort"-that most important OF all the
old plains landmarks-the sign of rest and
comfort and safety which SO gladdened the
weary trail travellers of the early days-the
point to which all routes tended, as all roads
led to Rome; and where so much OF the ro-
nance of the border was enacted or recount
ed, only to fade away and be forgotten with
the going out of the old life of rude courage
and eccentric honesty, of blended humor and
elsewhere in the world.
When we stepped from the cars at Pueblo
the next morning, the air was perceptibly
lying before us like fallen sky of
gray and white clouds-great mOtiOnless
banks of involved curves and angles and sud-
den elevations, shutting off the world beyond
after the similitudcuf an extra horizon, and
fiinging The early sunshine back into our
faces with n kind of useless scOrn. Just
out III town tney looked TO De, though we
knew the nearest of them were more than
twenty miles away. So near, and yet so
far" sighed the Esthetic Princess of the party,
clasping her hands over her bosom in a little
cultured ecstacy. 1T snow matter" sug-
gested the End Man. And then we went to
breakfast-the most miserable breakfast.
think, that the country could well have af-
forded without recourse to the diet of the
Digger Indians.
We were to go, that day, by the narrow
gauge road, to La yeta, and up the Pass to the
summit of the Sangre de Christie Mountains;
and we found it an experience that was an
apocalypse of delight and wonder. For half
the day we rode over the level, inclining pla-
teau OF brief grass and abundant sand, having
the mountains constantly in sight-the trees