Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-08-28
JACKSON SLOCUM ABROAD.

fuIly-Blown up by Inscriptions News
paper Men-Some Knotty Conundrums.
Correspondence st. Paul Globe.l
MINNEAPOLIS, Kan, Aug. 22.-I
haven't been on board the deck of an
equine since was gushing youth, but
as nearly all the inhabitants of Kansas
have horse or mule ready saddled and
bridled, both day and night, and hitched
to the handles of their front doors and
cabins, ready for either emergency of
business, or opportunity for pleasure or
recreation and, as the men, boys, girls
and women seem as much at home astride
these literal beasts of burden as modern
swell on Broadway promenade, on invi
tation of Banker Clark, of the infant city
of 1000 inhabitants, from which indite,
l INDUCED Ia herder, to visit
with him, over two miles of wheel-gut-
tered roads.
THE CITY OF THE ROCKS.
Crossing the Solomon river, of quite
recent cyclone reputation. and soon after
Salt creek, whose sluggish waters are as
thoroughly saline as the surf at Rock
away, and whose banks have been licked
and Tapped by the countless herds of buff
falo,. elk and antelope, now loafng, with
all good Indians, in the happy hunting
grounds, we finally found ourselves ST.
lent horsemen in the center of mag
nifcent stretch of unbroken prairie sod.
CHANGING forward, would have taken
my oath before Joe Bradley that espied
an Indian village, whose weli-defined
lodges were capable of afford
ing habitation and concealment to
at least 500 painted warriors, their
weapons defensive, and implements do
nestle, their interesting family circles,
notforgetting the necessary troop of wild
mustangs. Instinctively l thrust my
hand into myIhip pocket most mortifiedly
to find naught there but my memorandum
andsmy lead pencil, while Banker Clark's
face was lighted up with smile as full
of glee as though he had just clapped a
ten per cent mortgage upon granger's
$4,000 farm for a loan of 200 of some
Eastern capitalist, and raked in his own
little toll of two per cent per domino for
conducting the transaction.
What was my establishment in coming
up to the outer circle of this seemingly
isolated Sioux encampment, to find it to
consist of fully 1000 distinct
and separate rocky boulders COW
ering an area of at least forty acres, each
rock weighing from five to sixty tons,
having an altitude of from ten to fifty
feet, and the largest in circumference of
from thirty to 300 yards. In every in
stance, the rounded cones and spheres of
this hard grey stone rested upon base OF
q species of detached lime rock, as though
mounted thereon by human agency, and
to make the group still more interesting,
while there was plenty of the limestone
in the section, no geological rock forma-
ton corresponding to these boulders is
known in this part of the world. 1t was
not difficult to imagine that many OF these
huge rocks, smoothed, rounded and pol
ished in such perfect resemblance, must
have served the children of the ancient
geni for spinning tops; that here far back
in the ages old Jupiter had an arsenal or
fought a battle that caused both hemis-
pheres to tremble; or perchance, these
polished spheres might be stray balls
from the phantom bowling alley of Hen
drick Hudson and his ghostly crew, or
the remnants of the Katter skills, who
gave old Rip Van Wrinkle such lengthy
nap. and vet give Joe Jefferson years of
sleep so often.
But, as no Cleopatrian asp flew out
from the silent, solid hives of this giant
apiary; no Esquimoux, Hottentot or In
dian begged whisky or tobacco from some
hidden crevice in these sphinx-lodges in
the wilderness of the western plains, real
horse sense at last relieved my mind
from it's Pegasus fights fancy. Examin
ing these formations more closely, an I'M
mistakeable mark of wave-chiseling and
uniformity of water-gaf and seam was
visible, making 1t evident that sea-
foam was known in Kansas in
the ancient as well as modern
DAYS, and demonstrating that if Noah's
ark had not made the trip via Denver
and Kansas City to Arrarat by some other
route, it would have been sucked in be-
tween this raging Charybdis and Scylla
or swamped by the maelstrom circling
above them in the Solomon valley.
After Minneapolis junior gets big
endlgh to spar with Abilene over its size
of census, it is going to fence in its city
of rocks for public park and build an
avenue thereto When unborn genera
lions horseback thither in the "sweet
bye and bye we hope some saddle will
be invented for novitiates, which Will
not necessitate teeth holding Of the reins
and two-handed labor at the name and
crupper Chow nobly clGtes the imD
tient steed, think was penned by the
sweet bard of Avon, but they are now
nv sentiments to the letter, or were after
that ride
Of course it is now impossible to get
lsok at an Usage or Wyandotte Indian
as he was in Kansas, and the very few |
have observed toiling in its brick yards
gave me no romantic feelings. AS for
the tawny buffalo, he neither feeds or
hides within these borders, though you
are shown his old trails from the Missouri
and Mississippi to the Rockies, clean
overland, air line routes, showing his I'm
erring instincts as a civil engineer, while
the annual rumor that herd of 100 head
are browsing near the Colorado line, ele-
Yates every old huntsman and young
quail and chicken murderer on his ear.
The period also seems to be OF the fast,
when, with $1,000 set up in private
banking in the remoter counties one
could accumulate fifty or sixty thousand
dollars inside of five years, by helping the
farmers market their wheat, corn and
swine, with Is and 20 per cent. monthly
loans, taking in at the back door and let