A noble expanse of endless undulations rising and falling like the mighty swells of the rolling ocean. Here, the far-off rim of the world where the purple mist, like an amethyst crown, presses gently down upon the brow of the lovely landscape. There, where the sun falls like a golden globe, "From out the rich autumnal west Through prairies green From out the burning west is seen". Valleys adown which wind the silvery streams, marked by the dark-green foliage of trees, lying like broad ribbons flung carelessly athwart a tinted carpet aflame with wild flowers. Herds of lowing cattle on a thousand hills. Troops of horses for the armies of all the nations of the earth. Fields of alfalfa dew-gemmed and glittering in the morning sun. Golden harvests so ample that a world may have bread. Walls of corn unending walls of corn. Cities where commerce moves with busy feet, and iron ways along which pour the products of a prosperous and happy people. The gentle rise of rolling hills where come the generations of children to school. And overhead and above all, away up and up, the broad reaches of iridescent skies. There come, too, the lazy days when "The cottonwoods that fringe The streamlets take the tinge; Through opal haze the sumach bush is burning; Through cornfields dry and crisp, Their fond regrets for days no more returning". THAT is Kansas. Roving bands of Indians. Wigwam villages where women screamed to the chorus of wolfish dogs. Herds of buffalo that surged up to the Rocky Mountains like the waves of the restless sea. Prairie-dog towns marking the lonely eminence. Clouds of sand-hill cranes drifting grotesquely overhead. The prairie chicken rising nervously with whirring wings from the brown grass. The sluggish fish in the soil-stained streams. The earth and all that live thereon where the winds were fierce and the heavens brass. Brown tangled grasses of never-tilled lands. Shallow streams wandering aimlessly until they frayed out and disappeared in thirsty sands. Gnarled shrubs twisted awry by never-ceasing winds. Ranks of swaying cottonwoods with bending willows at their feet. Sunrise and sunset, but no seed-time and never a harvest. Burning siroccos, consuming drouth, biting blizzard decade after decade, age after age, and no change. That was Kansas. There beyond the Mississippi it lay, its western confines indefinitely set by the imperceptible rise which reaches up to the snowy ranges of rockribbed mountains. The vast basins of great tributaries of the Missouri lay to the north; and the branches of the lower Mississippi stretched away to the south. Inaccessible from the west and beyond reach of the east, it was set aside for the use of the Indian by those who awaited a time opportune for the effort to plant there the institution of slavery. And thus it spread its fertile and primitive limits outside the pale of civilization while history was recording pages of events. It had no large rivers, no high mountains, no lakes, no dense forests, no fertile meadows, apparently no natural wealth. Kansas was a wild desert where General Pike believed future gen erations might perhaps raise goats. But it was a desert with the possibilities of redemption. Then "Came the restless Coronado To the open Kansas plain, With his Knights from sunny Spain". And like the other Spaniards of his day, he could "Die for glory or for gold But not make a desert quicken”. The Spaniard could plant a flag but not an empire in North America. And so he passed. Then came the volatile and ever restless Frenchman. To find the West he traversed Canada. Far and wide journeyed the stern old Jesuits. They explored the dark and gloomy forest and followed tiny streams until they became "the mother of floods, the father of waters". Wandering through the melancholy woods in which were the villages of the Hurons, they crossed the mighty rivers to the land of the Dakotahs and the Osages. But they never took root in Kansas. And, so, they passed. The Mississippi remained the western boundary of our country until "The blue-eyed Saxon race Came and bade the desert waken". But before this hour of destiny struck the nineteenth century was in swaddling clothes. From a compact habitat along the Atlantic these Saxons had battled with the Frenchman on the north, the Spaniard on the south, and with savages up to and beyond the Alleghenies. They had rebelled against the mother-country and won for themselves and their children liberty and self-control. One of the historic business-ventures of this enterprising people was the purchase of Louisiana. Along with many other things came Kansas. After preliminary processes it was defined - had bounds set for it. Then the two ideas of our national progress came with followers to contend for supremacy, which, once attained in Kansas, was to carry with it mastery of the Nation. With those who came to build the temple of liberty came Ingalls. Those who break the wilderness are always the stalwart and the brave-the courageousmen with faith, foresight, fortitude. The men and women who came to settle and redeem Kansas were themselves descendants of pioneers "Strong builders of empire". On the 4th day of October, 1858, John J. Ingalls |