St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1879-07-04
A Kansas Letter.
TOPEKA, Kansas, June 25, 187
|. w. SANBoRN, Sec'y.

|
Perhaps, Mr.. Editor, some of your
northern readers who have been DELHI
Grating on the propriety of snowshoe
festivals in June, may like to have a
word from the centIe of our country. l
use the term 'centre" advisedly, for
within the state of Kansas is the geo.
graphical centre of the United States.
This portion of our country is won
derfully beautiful and charming; IN
expectedly so to a New England person.
While in this part of the state there are
no mountains, or hills even, in the east
ern use of the term, the surface of the
country is rolling, and free from both
level flats and sunken valleys, so that
it all readily drains into the creeks and
rivers, and no stagnant water is left af
ter the heaviest rains. The creeks and
rivers are skirted with the freshest and
richest of varied green's. This high
ground is naturally of trees, but a great
many forest trees have been planted
thereon, and there is no suggestion, in
this neighborhood, of scarcity of wood
land.
The growth of vegetation is most re-
markable in its rapidity. On the four
teenth of May we had radishes as large
us ones fingers, grown from seed sown
four weeks before in an open field which
had been titled for years and never had
any fertilizing! On the nineteenth of
June we had turnip-beets eleven and
three-quarters inches in circumference,
raised in the same field in nine weeks
from the sowing of the seed. Our early
cabbage (started under glass; has firm
well-filled heads nearly as large as a
mans head, and green peas, string
beams, ETC., have long ago ceased to be
novelties. Wheat is partially harvest
ed, and corn is as high as a mans
shoulders.
Your readers will rightly surmise that
SnOW-ShOeS have not been thought of for
some weeks. Indeed we acknowledge
that the weather is very warm. The
sun rises and sets at horizon, appar-
antly almost as low as our feet, and its
heat at midday is very powerful. But
there is almost always pleasant
breeze, and never that close, sitting,
"muggy" heat which makes hot days in
the east so intolerable. The nights too,
are cool and refreshing. We have not
yet reached our hottest weather and |
cannot speak of July and August from
experience, but | am assured that the
heated term is never so trying as it is
in the region of Washington. Kansas
weather is an enigma. l asked an old
settler (he had been in the state ten
years. when the sky presented to me an
appearance of rain, if he thought we
were likely to have rain. He replied,
''yeu just can't tell anything about
Kansas weather; it may rain hard in
ten minutes and it may not rain for a
month, and that is an exact state
ment of the case. There are no noun
tains to circumscribe and narrow the
horizon, or to gather the clouds. The
wide expanse of sky is like that at sea.
Suddenly dark clouds gather in some
portions of the blue vault and the luck
less adventurer who had counted upon
fair weather is drenched. Or perhaps
the whole sweep from horizon to hori-
zon, is covered with dark threatening
clouds, and it seems almost certain that
rain will fall in few minutes, but the
clouds suddenly break and disappear
and no rain. When storms do come,
the wind is often very high, developing
occasionally into cyclones; thunder
and lightning is severe; the rain pours,
and hail is common. Scarcely more
damage is done, however, than by
storms and freshets at the north.
B. d. E.