Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-15
A BIG WHEAT FIELD.
Rudyard Kipling Sees the Wonders
of the Great Northwest.
FARMING ON A WHOLESALE PLAN.
Scenery of the Canadian Pacific as Winter
Yields to Spring.
ANNEXATION AND THE M'KINLEY LAW

there wasn't a foot of earth to see. 1t wa.
just naturally covered with snow" says the
conductor standing in the rear car of the
Great Northern train.
He speaks as though the snow had bic
something priceless. Here is the view
One railway track and a line of staggering
telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blul
on the horizon. To the left and right, 8
sweep as it were Of the sea, one huge plain
of corn land wailing for the spring dotted
at rare intervals with wooden farm houses,
patent self reapers and binders almost al
big as the houses, icks left over from last
years abundant harvest and mottled here
and there with black patches to show that
the early blowing had begun. The snow
lies in last few streaks and whirls by the
track; from skyline to skyline is black loam
prairie grass SO dead that it seems as though
no one years sun would waken 1t.
Kipling Sarcastic Free Trader.
This is the granary of the land where the
farmer who bears the burdens of the State,
and who therefore ascribes last years
bumper crop to the direct action of the Nc
Kinley bill, has also to bear the ghastly
monotony of earth and sky. He keeps his
head, having many things to attend to, but
his wife sometimes goes mad as the women
do in Vermont. There is little variety in
natures big wheat field. They say that
when the corn is in the ear the wind chases
shadow-waves across it for mile on mile,
breeds as it were a vertigo in those who
must look and cannot turn their eyes away.
And they tell a nightmare story of q
woman who lived with her husband for IA
years at an army post in just such land as
this Then they were transferred to West
Point among the hills over the Hudson and
she came to New York, but the terrors of
the tall houses grew upon her and grew
till she went down with brain fever, and the
dread of her delirium was that the terrible
things would topple down and crush her.
| That is true story.
They work for harvest with steam plows
here; how could mere horses face the end
less burrows? And they attack the earth
with toothed, cogged and spiked engines
that would be monstrous in the shops, but
| here are only speckles on the yellow grass.
Everything on a Grand Scale.
Even the locomotive is cowed. A train
| of freight cars is passing along line that
comes out of the blue and goes on till it
meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train
would move off with joyous vibrant roar.
Here it steals away down the vista of the
telegraph poles with an awed whisper, steals
awav and sinks into the soil Then comes a
town deep in black mud-a straggly inch
thick plank town with dull-red grain ele-
vators. The open country refuses to be
subdued even for few score rods. Each
street ends in the illimitable open, and it is
as though the whole houseless outside earth
were racing through it
Toward evening under gray sky flies by
an unframed picture of desolation. In the
foreground farm wagon almost axle deep
in mud. the mire dripping from the slow
turning wheels as the man fogs the horses
Behind him on a knoll, of sodden, soggy
grass fenced off by ra W rails from the land
scape at large, are knot of utterly unin-
terested citizens who have fogged horses
and raised wheat in their time, but to-day
lie under Clipped and weather-worn wood
en- headstones. Surely, burial here must
be more awful to the newly made ghost
than burial at sea.
There is more snow as We 60 north and
nature is hard at work breaking up the
ground for the spring. The thaw has filled
every depression with q sullen gray-black
spate and out on the levels the water lies
six inches deep in stretch upon stretch as
far as the eyes can reach. Every culvert is
full and the broken ice clicks against the
wooden pier guards of the bridges
Under the Queens shelterfng Power.
Somewhere in this iatness there ia a re-
freshinp Jingle of snurs along the ears and
a man of fbe Canadian mounted nolice
swaouers tbrough with his hiack fnr can
and fbe Yellow tab aside his w.ll-fttinq
oyeralls and his better set nm hack One
wants to shake hands with him because he
= L.
is clean and does not slouch or spit, trims
ms mar ana walks as man snouio. Linen
aOustoh house olncer wants 70 Know zoo
niucn ABOUT clgars. "hlsky anu clo.ioa
wafer. her Majesty, 1ne queen OF Eng
ianu, ano tne npless VI ihoia, las US ih
nel AespIng. Ng'IIug has naPPeheo 70
.ne lanusoape, anu inuiPeg, winch Is, as
IL "ere' eenter OF olstrloution 1or emil
grants, stanos 81 up 70 ner knees IN tne water
OF she NAV. Inc yea! mas turned IN earnest
ana solneDouy Is Hlklng aa aOout tne nrst
Ice,sno'e a' H"on'feai i''oo vi i'4oo miles
east -,
Iney Will not run trains on sunday at
MontIeaL ana TINS is w eonesaay' Inere-
iore the Canaolan racine makes up tram
10 vancouver az wlnnepeg. Inis Is worth
rememoerlng, because Ie" people travel on
!nat train ana you escape any rusn OF tour
ISIS running westward 10 eaten the oko-
mama poat. Inc car Is your own ana with
II the services OF the porter. Our porter
seeing tnlngs were sIack' oegalleo mmseli
Win guitar which gave triumPnal ana
les'ive louch 70 tae Journey rld1culousiy
ous ol keePing WIN 'Ie view. ror elgns
anu twenty iong nours oIo tne Dored loco
motlVe iran us Lhrougn nat ana nary
PumTerea itGou .bot sna sReek,ea a. WIN WIN