Their primitive lodges contrasted strangely with the peaceful little sod-houses, dugouts, and white cottages of the incoming settlers on the public lands, with the villages struggling into existence, and above all with the rapidly moving cars; unmistakable evidences that the new civilization was soon to sweep the red men before it like chaff before the wind.
Farther to the west, a caravan of white-covered wagons loaded with supplies for some remote military post, the last that would ever travel the Old Trail, was slowly crawling toward the setting sun. I watched it until only a cloud of dust marked its place low down on the horizon, and it was soon lost sight of in the purple mist that was rapidly overspreading the far-reaching prairie.
It was the beginning of the end; on the 9th of February, 1880, the first train over the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Santa Fe and the Old Trail as a route of commerce was closed forever. The once great highway is now only a picture in the memory of the few who have travelled its weary course, following the windings of the silent Arkansas, on to the portals that guard the rugged pathway leading to the shores of the blue Pacific.
FOOTNOTES.
1 ([return])
[ The whole country watered by the Mississippi and Missouri was called Florida at that time.]
2 ([return])
[ The celebrated Jesuit, author of The History of New France, Journals of a Voyage to North America, Letters to the Duchess, etc.]