Gradually, as he is whirled along the iron trail, the woods lessen; he catches views of beautiful intervales; a bright little stream flashes and foams in the sunlight as the trees grow fewer, and soon he emerges on the broad sea of prairie, shut in only by the great circle of the heavens.
Dotting this motionless ocean everywhere, like whitened sails, are quiet homes, real argosies ventured by the sturdy and industrious people who have fought their way through almost insurmountable difficulties to the tranquillity which now surrounds them.
A few miles west of Topeka, the capital of Kansas, when the train reaches the little hamlet of Wakarusa, the track of the railroad commences to follow the route of the Old Santa Fe Trail. At that point, too, the Oregon Trail branches off for the heavily timbered regions of the Columbia. Now begins the classic ground of the once famous highway to New Mexico; nearly every stream, hill, and wooded dell has its story of adventure in those days when the railroad was regarded as an impossibility, and the region beyond the Missouri as a veritable desert.
After some hours' rapid travelling, if our tourist happens to be a passenger on the "California Limited," the swift train that annihilates distance, he will pass by towns, hamlets, and immense cattle ranches, stopping only at county-seats, and enter the justly famous Arkansas valley at the city of Hutchinson. The Old Trail now passes a few miles north of this busy place, which is noted for its extensive salt works, nor does the railroad again meet with it until the site of old Fort Zarah is reached, forty-seven miles west of Hutchinson, though it runs nearly parallel to the once great highway at varying distances for the whole detour.
The ruins of the once important military post may be seen from the car-windows on the right, as the train crosses the iron bridge spanning the Walnut, and here the Old Trail exactly coincides with the railroad, the track of the latter running immediately on the old highway.
Three miles westward from the classic little Walnut the Old Trail ran through what is now the Court House Square of the town of Great Bend; it may be seen from the station, and on that very spot occurred the terrible fight of Captains Booth and Hallowell in 1864.
Thirteen miles further mountainward, on the right of the railroad, not far from the track, stands all that remains of the once dreaded Pawnee Rock. It lies just beyond the limits of the little hamlet bearing its name. It would not be recognized by any of the old plainsmen were they to come out of their isolated graves; for it is only a disintegrated, low mass of sandstone now, utilized for the base purposes of a corral, in which the village herd of milch cows lie down at night and chew their cuds, such peaceful transformation has that great civilizer, the locomotive, wrought in less than two decades.
Another five or six miles, and the train crosses Ash Creek, which, too, was once one of the favourite haunts of the Pawnee and Comanche on their predatory excursions, in the days when the mules and horses of passing freight caravans excited their cupidity. A short whirl again, and the town of Larned, lying peacefully on the Arkansas and Pawnee Fork, is reached. Immediately opposite the centre of the street through which the railroad runs, and which was also the course of the Old Trail, lying in the Arkansas River, close to its northern bank, is a small thickly-wooded island, now reached by a bridge, that is famous as the battle-ground of a terrible conflict thirty years ago, between the Pawnees and Cheyennes, hereditary enemies, in which the latter tribe was cruelly defeated.
The railroad bridge crosses Pawnee Fork at the precise spot where the Old Trail did. This locality has been the scene of some of the bloodiest encounters between the various tribes of savages themselves, and between them and the freight caravans, the overland coaches, and every other kind of outfit that formerly attempted the passage of the now peaceful stream. In fact, the whole region from Walnut Creek to the mouth of the Pawnee, which includes in its area Ash Creek and Pawnee Rock, seemed to be the greatest resort for the Indians, who hovered about the Santa Fe Trail for the sole purpose of robbery and murder; it was a very lucky caravan or coach, indeed, that passed through that portion of the route without being attacked.
All the once dangerous points of the Old Trail having been successively passed—Cow Creek, Big and Little Coon, and Ash Creek, Fort Dodge, Fort Aubrey,[73] and Point of Rocks—the tourist arrives at last at the foot-hills. At La Junta the railroad separates into two branches; one going to Denver, the other on to New Mexico. Here, a relatively short distance to the northwest, on the right of the train, may be seen the ruins of Bent's Fort, the tourist having already passed the site of the once famous Big Timbers, a favourite winter camping-ground of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes; but everywhere around him there reigns such perfect quiet and pastoral beauty, he might imagine that the peaceful landscape upon which he looks had never been a bloody arena.