Arkansas surprised the world by the exhibition it made of itself at New Orleans, not only for its natural resources, but for the range and variety of its productions. That it is second to no other State in its adaptability to cotton-raising was known; that it had magnificent forests and large coal-fields and valuable minerals in its mountains was known; but that it raised fruit superior to any other in the South-west, and quite equal to any in the North, was a revelation. The mountainous part of the State, where some of the hills rise to the altitude of 2500 feet, gives as good apples, pears, and peaches as are raised in any portion of the Union; indeed, this fruit has taken the first prize in exhibitions from Massachusetts to Texas. It is as remarkable for flavor and firmness as it is for size and beauty. This region is also a good vineyard country. The State boasts more miles of navigable waters than any other, it has variety of soil and of surface to fit it for every crop in the temperate latitudes, and it has a very good climate. The range of northern mountains protects it from “northers,” and its elevated portions have cold enough for a tonie. Of course the low and swampy lands are subject to malaria. The State has just begun to appreciate itself, and has organized efforts to promote immigration. It has employed a competent State geologist, who is doing excellent service. The United States has still a large quantity of valuable land in the State open to settlement under the homestead and preemption laws. The State itself has over 2,000,000 acres of land, forfeited and granted to it in various ways; of this, the land forfeited for taxes will be given to actual settlers in tracts of 160 acres to each person, and the rest can be purchased at a low price. I cannot go into all the details, but the reader may be assured that the immigration committee make an exceedingly good showing for settlers who wish to engage in farming, fruit-raising, mining, or lumbering. The Constitution of the State is very democratic, the statute laws are stringent in morality, the limitations upon town and city indebtedness are severe, the rate of taxation is very low, and the State debt is small. The State, in short, is in a good condition for a vigorous development of its resources.
There is a popular notion that Arkansas is a “bowie-knife” State, a lawless and an ignorant State. I shared this before I went there. I cannot disprove the ignorance of the country districts. As I said, more money is needed to make the public-school system effective. But in its general aspect the State is as orderly and moral as any. The laws against carrying concealed weapons are strict, and are enforced.. It is a fairly temperate State. Under the high license and local option laws, prohibition prevails in two-thirds of the State, and the popular vote is strictly enforced. In forty-eight of the seventy-five counties no license is granted, in other counties only a single town votes license, and in many of the remaining counties many towns refuse it. In five counties only is liquor perfectly free. A special law prohibits liquor-selling within five miles of a college; within three miles of a church or school, a majority of the adult inhabitants can prohibit it. With regard to liquor-selling, woman suffrage practically exists. The law says that on petition of a majority of the adult population in any district the county judge must refuse license. The women, therefore, without going into politics, sign the petitions and create prohibition.
The street-cars and railways make no discrimination as to color of passengers. Everywhere I went I noticed that the intercourse between the two races was friendly. There is much good land on the railway between Little Rock and Arkansas City, heavily timbered, especially with the clean-boled, stately gum-trees. At Pine Bluff, which has a population of 5000, there is a good colored Normal School, and the town has many prosperous negroes, who support a racetrack of their own, and keep up a county fair. I was told that the most enterprising man in the place, the largest street-railway owner, is black as a coal. Farther down the road the country is not so good, the houses are mostly poor shanties, and the population, largely colored, appears to be of a shiftless character. Arkansas City itself, low-lying on the Mississippi, has a bad reputation.
Little Rock, already a railway centre of importance, is prosperous and rapidly improving. It has the settled, temperate, orderly society of an Eastern town, but democratic in its habits, and with a cordial hospitality which is more provincial than fashionable. I heard there a good chamber concert of stringed instruments, one of a series which had been kept up by subscription all winter, and would continue the coming winter. The performers were young Bohemians. The gentleman at whose pleasant, old-fashioned house I was entertained, a leading lawyer and jurist in the South-west, was a good linguist, had travelled in most parts of the civilized globe, had on his table the current literature of France, England, Germany, and America, a daily Paris newspaper, one New York journal (to give its name might impugn his good taste in the judgment of every other New York journal), and a very large and well-selected library, two-thirds of which was French, and nearly half of the remainder German. This was one of the many things I found in Arkansas which I did not expect to find.
XIV.—ST. LOUIS AND KANSAS CITY.
St. Louis is eighty years old. It was incorporated as a town in 1808, thirteen years before the admission of Missouri into the Union as a State. In 1764 a company of thirty Frenchmen made a settlement on its site and gave it its distinguished name. For nearly half a century, under French and Spanish jurisdiction alternately, it was little more than a trading post, and at the beginning of this century it contained only about a thousand inhabitants. This period, however, gave it a romantic historic background, and as late as 1853, when its population was a hundred thousand, it preserved French characteristics and a French appearance—small brick houses and narrow streets crowded down by the river. To the stranger it was the Planters’ Hotel and a shoal of big steamboats moored along an extensive levee roaring with river traffic. Crowded, ill-paved, dirty streets, a few country houses on elevated sites, a population forced into a certain activity by trade, but hindered in municipal improvement by French conservatism, and touched with the rust of slavery—that was the St. Louis of thirty-five years ago.
Now everything is changed as by some magic touch. The growth of the city has always been solid, unspeculative, conservative in its business methods, with some persistence of the old French influence, only gradually parting from its ancient traditions, preserving always something of the aristocratic flavor of “old families,” accounted “slow” in the impatience of youth. But it has burst its old bounds, and grown with a rapidity that would be marvellous in any other country. The levee is comparatively deserted, although the trade on the lower river is actually very large. The traveller who enters the city from the east passes over the St. Louis Bridge, a magnificent structure and one of the engineering wonders of the modern world, plunges into a tunnel under the business portion of the old city, and emerges into a valley covered with a net-work of railway-tracks, and occupied by apparently interminable lines of passenger coaches and freight cars, out of the confusion of which he makes his way with difficulty to a carriage, impressed at once by the enormous railway traffic of the city. This is the site of the proposed Union Depot, which waits upon the halting action of the Missouri Pacific system. The eastern outlet for all this growing traffic is over the two tracks of the bridge; these are entirely inadequate, and during a portion of the year there is a serious blockade of freight. A second bridge over the Mississippi is already a necessity to the commerce of the city, and is certain to be built within a few years.
St. Louis, since the war, has spread westward over the gentle ridges which parallel the river, and become a city vast in territory and most attractive in appearance. While the business portion has expanded into noble avenues with stately business and public edifices, the residence parts have a beauty, in handsome streets and varied architecture, that is a continual surprise to one who has not seen the city for twenty years. I had set down the length of the city along the river-front as thirteen miles, with a depth of about six miles; but the official statistics are: length of river-front, 19.15 miles; length of western limits, 21.27; extent north and south in an air line, 17; and length east and west on an air line, 6.62. This gives an area of 61.37 square miles, or 39,276 acres. This includes the public parks (containing 2095 acres), and is sufficient room for the population of 450,000, which the city doubtless has in 1888. By the United States census of 1870 the population was reported much larger than it was, the figures having no doubt been manipulated for political purposes. Estimating the natural increase from this false report, the city was led to claim a population far beyond the actual number, and unjustly suffered a little ridicule for a mistake for which it was not responsible. The United States census of 1880 gave it 350,522. During the eight years from 1880 there were erected 18,574 new dwelling-houses, at a cost of over fifty millions of dollars.