It was night when we made our first stop of any length. That was at Kansas City. We here crossed the "Big Muddy," or the Missouri River, swollen by the extraordinary rains, and looking more than ever like a tawny lion.
As we neared Kansas City we could see across the waters of the river to the other side, where myriads of cattle wandered like spectres, awaiting further immediate shipment east, or, the nearer end of the adjacent slaughter-houses. How sad it all seemed. The cattle, magnified by the intervening air, loomed up hugely across the brown waters of the river. They seemed like victims of destiny, conscious of their doom; and the sullen river, and the shades of the falling day, gave fitting color and setting to the melancholy picture.
I asked a lady by my side, "Do you see all those cattle?" "Yes," said she; "I cannot bear to look at them." Our thoughts were the same.
How fortunate it is for us that our poor, four-footed brethren cannot probe our motives as we fatten our flocks and herds, and tend them with tireless assiduity! The beasts do love us, perhaps, and think us good and kind, and their best friend. I wonder, as they face the knife or the mallet, at the sublime moment of the end, are they awakened at last to the true inwardness of their false friend, man!
All this great prairie journey was a pleasant contrast to the great deserts and mountains we had passed, since we flew down through Jersey, the Southern States, across Texas and Arizona, out to California and the Rockies with all their wonders.
Our stay in Kansas City was limited to a few hours, but in that time some of us ventured out on the streets, which were not very inviting, down on the bottom lands among the grime of the railroad tracks.
Kansas City lies, the best part of it, on high bluffs overlooking the great Missouri River, and its tributary, at this point, the Kaw. It is really a picturesque place, and capable of being beautified to any extent. The bluffs are quite precipitous, and on their shelving sides a number of squatters have settled, with their nondescript cabins and huts, giving a sort of rag-fair look to the general aspect of the town as seen as a whole. But the City Fathers have awakened to the fact, that those precipitous bluffs can be made highly ornamental, by green sod and trees and flowers. A great park plan has been projected for all those curving spaces, and ere long the city will be made unique and beautiful by those winding, aspiring, and splendid plantations, out of which the homes, the churches, and public buildings will rise as from a garden.
In our brief stay we called on our dear and old-time friend, the Rev. J. Stewart Smith, of St. Mary's, or, rather, I should say he called on us, for, having announced our coming by telegraph, he was there at the station to meet us.
It so happened that a day or two before he had written, for one of the local papers, his recollection of the great fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor in Hampton Roads in the year 1862.
How much has transpired since then!