Speaking about timber reminds me that they have no woods out here. They always say “when you get through the timber” instead of when you get through the woods. They don’t have any swamps here either, they are all “sloughs,” pronounced “slews.” When the Rock Island road was first built it was a common sight on looking out of the car window to see seams of coal near the surface in the cuts through which the railroad ran. Now there are many farmers in Iowa who can go out and dig up enough coal in a few minutes to last all day in their stoves.
Since I left Connecticut I have hardly seen a clear stream of water. The Croton and Hudson Rivers were both very roily from the heavy spring rains, and farther West the streams are muddy the year round. Many times I have longed to strip and take a bath, but the water was unfit for anything but hog wallows. I wonder if the black soil and the consequently black muddy waters of these Western States has had anything to do with the color of the hair on the hogs. A white hog here in the West is as uncommon as a black hog in the East. When this country was first settled the hogs were probably brought from the East, and were white. Would wallowing in the black mud and water for weeks and months during the hot summer season gradually change the color of their hair to correspond to that of the soil in which they spend so much of their time? This question must be left to the evolutionists, who have explained, to their own satisfaction at least, so many questions of a like nature.
The cultivation of small fruits in the West has assumed immense proportions. Strawberries have glutted the markets to such an extent that the price will hardly pay for the transportation. Five cents a quart at retail has been the ruling price in many of these Western cities. Blackberries, raspberries, and other small fruits will also be very abundant. The extent to which the farm-work is done by machinery is truly wonderful. The farmer rides while he plows, harrows, and plants the corn, and the wheat is mostly sown in drills. The expense of ditching the land has been very great, amounting in some cases to ten dollars an acre, but now a machine digs the ditch, throws the dirt one side, lays the tiling and covers it up again. Still later in the season I shall probably see the wonderful harvesting machines. Fields of corn containing from a hundred to one hundred and fifty acres are common, in fact that is about the average crop raised by every farmer here. But how they work! From 4 in the morning till 8 at night. They would as soon think of stopping “to do the chores” in the middle of the afternoon as at 6 o’clock. With all the help from the machinery and horses, the Western farmer works very hard, much harder than the New England farmer. And in Iowa he does not seem to be in very good circumstances. His house is small and in poor repair, and his barns are poorer still. With corn at 18 cents a bushel, wheat lower than ever, butter 10 and 12 cents, eggs 8 cents, and all other farmers’ produce at like low figures, it requires immense crops to amount to much of an income.
The people out here also raise large families of children. Such is doubtless the case in all newly settled countries, but it is mentioned as a curious fact that people who have lived childless in the East for years, move out here, and immediately they are blessed with a goodly number of healthy boys and girls.
The gilded dome of the capitol at Des Moines can be seen for eight or ten miles in some directions, but the proportions of the dome are not so graceful as those of our own in Connecticut. The outside diameter is over 80 feet, with the inside 66 feet, while the height is 275 feet. The gilded part has a row of circular windows half way up, and compared with our own the whole dome has a decidedly more “squatty” appearance. The building is 240 by 360 feet, and inside is finished very nicely. The staircases, door casings, wainscoting, pillars, and panels are all or nearly all of genuine marble. In a country where there are so many public buildings that are decorated inside with imitations of every kind of marble known, it is quite refreshing to see so much here that is real. Thirty-two kinds of marble are used in the building. The house has only 100 members, the senate 50, the increase in population making no difference in the number of members, and yet the hall of the house is a very large room, 74 by 91 feet, and 47 feet high, and it is elegantly finished in marble, scagliola, and black walnut. These pillars of scagliola on the sides of the room are nearly as large as those at the entrance of our capitol at Hartford, and are very dark and rich in color. This material can only be used where there is little weight resting on the pillars for they are made of plaster of Paris with an iron rod in the middle. This rod is placed inside of a hollow cylinder, and plaster of Paris, variously colored, and mixed with glue to prevent its hardening quickly, is packed around it with occasionally a chunk of white plaster of Paris laid near the outside of the pillar, when the pillar is taken out of the case, placed in position and nicely polished, the various colors being brought out with a most beautiful effect. The senate chamber is finished in more elegant style, if anything, than the house, but it seemed a pity to see in such a nicely furnished room, in the rear of the president’s chair, two large panels of a sickly green colored marble, that were imitations of the real article, and very poor imitations, too. But the structure taken as a whole is so well constructed, and so nicely furnished, that it seems almost incredible that the cost of the whole in its finished state will not be over $3,000,000.
In Western Iowa I encountered frequent steep hills, too steep for safe coasting; and after rather ungracefully spinning down one of the steepest, to the astonishment of on-looking pedestrians, I concluded to take a railroad train to Omaha, which I reached in a few hours, after completing my 1980th mile on the wheel.
