it is estimated, yield a thousand million tons. There are others varying from one to five feet in thickness. The central and western portions of the State appear to contain inexhaustible beds of gypsum from fifteen to one hundred feet in thickness, and of incalculable value. There are, besides, beds of iron ore, which underlie a great portion of Kansas, capable of producing a fine quality of metal. In several rivers in the southern part of the State, explored by Professor Swallow, the crude ore had washed out from their banks, and was scattered in their beds in enormous quantities. Kansas has also rich deposits of lead, and in several counties petroleum has been discovered.

SALT REGION.-Another great source of wealth will doubtless be found in the salt springs which exist above Fort Riley, in the valleys of the Republican, Solomon, and Saline Forks. These are so abundant, and of such uncommon strength as sensibly to affect the quality of the water of the large streams which flow through those valleys into the Smoky Hill. These salines are supposed to have their center near the confluence of the Solomon and Smoky Hill. Hundreds of acres are covered with incrustations of pure salt on the surface of the ground, from three-eighths to half an inch in thickness. These remarkable formations come from brine oozing up from below, and not from surface flowings, so that crystallization succeeds crystallization on the removal of the salt already formed. Wells sunk 25 to 30 feet below the surface produce brine of more than three times the strength of sea-water, from which salt of remarkable purity is obtained. Chemical analysis, it is said, proves that the brines of Kansas contain less than four per cent. of impure matter, showing in this particular a marked superiority over those of New York, Michigan, and other States. The dryness of the atmosphere is favorable to the successful manufacture of salt by evaporation. Kansas seems destined to become one of the greatest salt-producing States.

SOIL AND CLIMATE.-The soil of Kansas is of a richness unsurpassed in any part of the United States, and capable of many years' culture before being exhausted. The climate is healthy, and calculated to cure many diseases prevalent in the Eastern States. The popular impression that a sufficient quantity of rain does not fall there for agriclutural purposes is asserted to be without foundation in fact. From records kept at the military posts, it appears that during the past forty years there has been a sufficiency of rain except in 1860; and the drought of that year would have been less severely felt had Kansas, like the older States, been provided with a surplus of food from former years.

WOOL-GROWING.-The production and manufacture of wool promises to be an important branch of industry in Kansas. A large portion of the State is well adapted to sheep-raising, and so profitable had this proved, that in 1865 woolen-mills were in process of erection at AtchiIt was estimated that during 1866, 75,000 to 100,000 sheep would be imported from the Eastern and Middle States.

son.

RAILROADS. For the development of their great agricultural and mineral resources, the people of Kansas have been for some years past

actively engaged in establishing railroad communication with the Eastern and Pacific States. At the close of the year 1865, nearly fifty miles of the Kansas (lower) branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, which commences at Wyandotte, at the mouth of the Kansas River, and is destined to connect with the main line in Western Nebraska, were completed. Surveys had been extended to the one-hundredth meridian, a distance of about 381 miles; and there was a party in the field making surveys of the Smoky Hill route, who were to extend their labors to Denver City, about 581 miles from the eastern terminus of the road. The Atchison branch of the Union Pacific Road was also well under way, and the first forty miles, it was supposed, would be completed by May 1, 1866.

In addition to these enterprises, projects were also advanced for lines terminating at Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico, and at Santa Fe.

At the beginning of the year 1867, the Governor of Kansas, in his message to the Legislature, stated the number of miles of railroad in the State at three hundred, and that the Union Pacific Company expected to complete two hundred miles more during the year.

Early in February, 1867, the people of Douglas County voted in favor of a subscription of $300,000, in county bonds, to the capital of the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad. This, it was said, would insure the immediate commencement of the work at Lawrence.

At the beginning of 1867, the Wyandotte branch of the Pacifie Railroad had been completed twenty miles west of Fort Riley. The road was graded forty miles beyond, and under the contract it was to be finished to the three hundred and eighty-fifth mile by the first of January, 1868. The earnings of the road were nearly $80,000 per month, and were expected to average $100,000 per month in 1867.

CITIES AND TOWNS.-Lawrence, a city, and the capital of Douglas County, is situated on the right bank of the Kansas River, 70 miles from its mouth by the windings of the stream, and 43 in a straight line. It is built on a slope, and many of its buildings are constructed of brick or stone. It has churches belonging to the Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, etc.; newspapers, saw and grist-mills, a machine-shop, coach and wagon factories, a tannery, a soap and candle factory, a brewery and distillery, and a large number of hotels. It is well supplied with schools. The population of the city in 1860 was about 2,500. It was founded in 1854 by emigrants from the Eastern States. A salt well sunk about the beginning of the present year (1867), within the corporate limits of Lawrence, it was stated, was yielding one hundred bushels of salt daily, with only a small cistern pump. A company had

been formed and works were to be forthwith erected.

Leavenworth, a city, and the capital of the county of the same name, is situated on the right bank of the Missouri River, three miles below Fort Leavenworth, and 500 miles from the mouth of the river. The city has straight avenues, crossing each other at right angles. It is lighted with gas. It embraced in 1860 twelve churches, seven schools, eight banking-houses, eleven hotels, thirteen lumber-yards, seven

steam saw-mills, a flour-mill, a machine shop, three soap and candle factories, six breweries, two coach and wagon factories, one sash and blind factory, four brick-yards, and various other manufacturing establishments. Three daily and five weekly newspapers were published, one of which was in German and one in French. Leavenworth was founded in 1854, and contained in 1860 a population of about 10,000. It is connected with St. Joseph and Jefferson City by steamboat and railroad lines.

Lecompton, formerly the capital of Kansas, before it became a State, is situated on the Kansas River, about midway between Topeka, the State capital, and Lawrence, and 60 miles west from Westport in Missouri. It is the seat of the United States land-office, and $50,000 was appropriated by Congress to erect the Government buildings it con

tains.

The other principal cities and towns in Kansas are Atchison, Doniphan, Elwood, Manhattan, Ossawatomie, and Topeka, the State capital. One of the most notable places in the settlement of Kansas after its Territorial organization in 1854, is Atchison, situated in the northeastern corner of the State, on the west bank of the Missouri, and in a great bend of that river, which makes it the most western town in either Kansas or Missouri. It is about 50 miles north-east of Lawrence, 500 from St. Louis, and about 20 above Leavenworth, and the same distance from St. Joseph, the metropolis of northern Missouri. A railroad on the opposite bank of the river places Atchison in communication by rail as well as by river with St. Joseph, Leavenworth, and the important points above and below. It is the starting-point of the overland mail for the mining regions and California, and the headquarters of the stage company; and also one of the chief points on the border for the transhipment, from cars and steamboats to wagons, of goods of all sorts bound to the mines of Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Montana, etc. Nebraska City and Omaha in Nebraska, St. Joseph in Missouri, and Leavenworth and Lawrence in Kansas, are rivals of Atchison in the great business of freighting to the West; but from its local position and advantages, Atchison probably does more of the outfitting and forwarding than any other one town.

Topeka, the capital of the State, is on the south side of the Kansas River, 50 miles west of Westport, Missouri, and 25 miles west of Lawrence. It is handsomely laid out, with streets 130 feet wide, and crossing each other at right angles. It has several fine blocks of buildings, and is quite an active business place.

Fort Leavenworth, a well-known military post, is situated on the west bank of the Missouri River, three miles above Leavenworth City, 31 miles above the mouth of Kansas River, four miles below Weston, Missouri, and in latitude 39° 21', and longitude 94° 44'. This is the oldest fort in Missouri, having been established in 1827. It is the great military depot for the frontier posts, and the general rendezvous for troops proceeding to the Western forts. The fort has a fine landing for steamboats. All the buildings are well constructed, and present an imposing appearance. Here was the rendezvous of General Kearney,

in June, 1846, before his expedition to Santa Fe, and from this point started the expeditions of General Joseph Lane in 1843; Captain Stansbury to Salt Lake in 1849; the surveyors of the Central Pacific Railroad route in 1853; Colonel Fremont, for a similar purpose, in the same year, etc.

Fort Riley, established in 1853, is situated at the junction of the two main branches of the Kansas River, the Smoky Hill and Republican Forks. It is 140 miles from Fort Leavenworth, and in latitude 39° 3′, and longitude 96° 24', and lies on an elevation of 926 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. It is in the midst of a fertilizing country, abounding in timber, good water, building materials, etc.

NEVADA.

"CARRY yourself," says a writer in Harper's Magazine, "carry yourself in imagination far from the centers of civilization, over weird wastes and savage wilds, to a point where the 115th degree of west longitude intersects with the 42d degree of north latitude. The head-waters of the Owyhee there a small river or brook-are gurgling a mile or so behind you; your right foot presses the golden sands of Idaho; your left is under the spiritual jurisdiction of Brigham Young, while at your feet the unerring eye of science marks out the north-eastern corner of the new State of Nevada. Travel thence due west for a hundred miles, over rugged mountains, lofty buttes, and patches of desert and valley, and you reach the Mica Hills, glittering in the sunlight like cones of gold; thirty miles more in the same direction will bring you to the divide between the waters of the Columbia River and the Great Basin; a hundred miles more still due west, and you are in a wondrous country of petrified trees-stony finger-points of the antediluvian past-of spark. ling streams, translucent lakes, high mountains, and gloomy canons. Then you have a range of granite mountains to cross, and forty or fifty miles more carries you to the north-western corner of the young State, where, in the vicinity of Nye's Lake and Roop's Lake, 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, 250 miles from the initial point, and where the 120th line of west longitude crosses the 42d parallel of north latitude, the State of Oregon stretches to the north, and Lassen County, California, faces you on the west.

"Southward thence along the 120th longitudinal line, with California on your right and Nevada on your left, pursue your course. You will need the wing of an eagle and the eye of a bee to follow this line. The somber Sierras, crowned with tresses of pine, frowning with battlements of barren rock, wrinkled with mighty canons, and set with a tiara of glittering lakes, will be your companion for hundreds of miles. You skirt the western border of Honey Lake, and pass over the center of the inland sea of the Sierras, Lake Bigler, or, as it is now called, Lake

About thirty

Tahoe, from the Pahutah designation of Big Water. miles from the northern end of this lake, some ten miles from the eastern shore, at a point where the 120th line of west longitude intersects the 39th parallel of north latitude, the boundary line strikes off in a south-easterly direction, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, following the sweep of the Sierras for 200 miles to a point where the 37th parallel of north latitude intersects the 117th degree of west longitude. "Thence across a region seldom or never trod by the foot of man; along the line of desolate Arizona, with the burning sands of the distant Colorado heating the air to intensity-sixty miles-to the spot where the south-eastern corner of Nevada joins Utah and Arizona; thence 300 miles north along the Utah line to the point of commencement."

There are the boundaries of Nevada, extending 300 miles north and south and 250 miles east and west, on an elevated plateau between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains.

HISTORY. In the year 1850 Congress passed a law organizing the Territory of Utah. Within the boundaries of that Territory was the present State of Nevada. In the years 1859 and 1860 the silver mines in this region began to attract attention, and population to pour into those portions of the present State which were then known to possess valuable mines.

Besides those who crowded around the principal mines then discovered, a sparse population began to settle those valleys and favored spots along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which were valuable for grazing or agricultural purposes.

In the year 1854 the county of Carson was organized by the Territorial Legislature of Utah. That county embraced the greater portion of the territory of the present State of Nevada, and the inhabitants who came to work the mines found themselves in a country the only written laws of which were the United States Constitution, and such statutes enacted by the Congress of the United States as might be applicable to their situation, and the statute laws of the Mormons. The latter were not calculated to inspire much respect in a free and enlightened community. There were no statute laws of the United States applicable to the local wants and requirements of the people. It was difficult to determine what system of laws was in force among the mining population of what was then Carson County. By some it was contended that the civil law was in force there, because when the Mormons settled the Territory of Utah it was within the Mexican Republic, where the civil law prevails. Others contended that the common law was introduced into Utah, because the Mormons generally came from countries where the common law prevails; and more especially did they contend that the common law must be held to prevail in Carson County because the entire population of miners coming from California, settling in a country then almost desert, and without written law, must be held to have brought their own laws and customs with them. While the law was in this unsettled state, Congress passed an act organizing the Territory of Nevada. This act was approved March 2, 1861.