The State of New York is about the same size as the Kingdom of England. It is the nineteenth State in the Union in point of size, possessing area of more than 49,000 square miles, of which 1,500 square miles is covered by water, forming portions of the lakes. Its lake coast line extends 200 miles on Lake Ontario and 75 miles on Lake Erie. Lake Champlain flows along the eastern frontier for more than 100 miles, receiving the waters of Lake George, which has been described as the Como of America. The lake has a singular history. It was originally called by the French Canadians who discovered it, the "Lake of the Holy Sacrament," and it was the scene of battles and conflicts for over a hundred years.
The capital of the Empire State, with its population of such magnitude that it exceeds that of more than twenty important foreign nations, is Albany, which was founded by the Dutch in 1623, and which has since earned for itself the title of the "Edinburgh of America." Compared with New York City it is dwarfed in point of population and commercial importance.
Of the actual metropolis of the great Empire State it is impossible to speak at any length in the limited space at one's command. Of New York itself, Mr. Chauncey Depew said recently, in his forcible manner, "To-day, in the sisterhood of States, she is an empire in all that constitutes a great commonwealth. An industrious, intelligent, and prosperous population of 5,000,000 of people live within her borders. In the value of her farms and farm products, and in her manufacturing industries, she is the first State in the Union. She sustains over 1,000 newspapers and periodicals, has $80,000,000 invested in church property, and spends $12,000,000 a year on popular education. Upward of 300 academies and colleges fit her youth for special professions, and furnish opportunities for liberal learning and the highest culture, and stately edifices all over the State, dedicated to humane and benevolent objects, exhibit the permanence and extent of her organized charities. There are $600,000,000 in her savings banks, $300,000,000 in her insurance companies, and $700,000,000 in the capital and loans of her State and National banks. Six thousand miles of railroads, costing $600,000,000, have penetrated and developed every accessible corner of the State, and maintain, against all rivalry and competition, her commercial prestige."
[CHAPTER IV.]
IN THE CENTER OF THE COUNTRY.
The Geographical Center of the United States and its Location West of the Mississippi River--The Center of Population--History of Fort Riley--The Gallant "Seventh"--Early Troubles of Kansas--Extermination of the Buffalo--But a Few Survivors out of Many Millions.
Kansas is included by most people in the list of Western States; by many it is regarded as in the extreme West. If the Pilgrim Fathers had been told that the haven of refuge they had selected would, within two or three hundred years, be part of a great English-speaking nation with some 70,000,000 of inhabitants, and with its center some 1,500 miles westward, they would have listened to the story with pardonable incredulity, and would have felt like invoking condemnation upon the head of the reckless prophet who was addressing them.
Yet Kansas is to-day in the very center of the United States. This is not a printer's error, nor a play upon words, much as the New Englander may suspect the one or the other. There was a time when the word "West" was used to apply to any section of the country a day's journey on horseback from the Atlantic Coast. For years, and even generations, everything west of the Allegheny Mountains or of the Ohio River was "Out West." Even to-day it is probable that a majority of the residents in the strictly Eastern States regard anything west of the Mississippi River as strictly Western.
There is no doubt that when Horace Greeley told the young men of the country to "Go West and grow up with the country," he used the term in its common and not its strictly geographical sense, and many thousand youths, who took the advice of the philosopher and statesman, stopped close to the banks of the Mississippi River, and have grown rich in their new homes. It cannot be too generally realized, however, that the Mississippi River slowly wends its way down to the Gulf of Mexico well within the eastern half of the greatest nation in the world. At several points in the circuitous course of the Father of Waters, the distance between the river and the Atlantic Ocean is about 1,000 miles. In an equal number of points the distance to the Pacific Ocean is 2,000 miles, showing that whatever may be said of the tributaries of the Mississippi River, and especially of its gigantic tributary the Missouri, the Mississippi is an Eastern and not a Western river.
We give an illustration of the point which competent surveyors and engineers tell us is the exact geographical center of the United States proper. The monument standing in the center of this great country is surrounded by an iron railing, and is visited again and again by tourists, who find it difficult to believe the fact that a point apparently so far western is really central. The center of the United States has gone west with the absorption of territory, and the Louisiana purchase, the centenary of which we shall shortly celebrate, had a great effect on the location.