Even our train seemed to have been affected by this country. The observation car was deserted when we reached it. Presently, however, a stranger joined us there, and after a time we fell into conversation with him as we sat and looked at the receding track.
He proved to be a Kansan and he told us interesting things about the State.
Aside from wheat, which is the great Kansas crop, corn is grown in eastern Kansas, and alfalfa in various parts of the State. Alfalfa stays green throughout the greater part of the year as it goes through several sowings. Fields of alfalfa resemble clover fields, save that the former grows more densely and is of a richer, darker shade of green. After alfalfa has grown a few years the roots run far down into the ground, often reaching the "underflow" of western Kansas. This underflow is very characteristic of that part of the State, where it is said, there are many lost rivers flowing beneath the surface, adding one more to the list of Kansas phenomena. Some of these rivers flow only three or four feet below the ground, I am told, while others have reached a depth of from twenty to a hundred feet. Alfalfa roots will go down twenty feet to find the water. The former bed of the Republican River in northwestern Kansas is, with the exception of a narrow strip in the middle where the river runs on the surface in flood times, covered with rich alfalfa fields. Excepting at the time of spring and summer rains, this river is almost dry. The old bridges over it are no longer necessary except when the rains occur, and the river has piled sand under them until in some places there is not room for a man to stand beneath bridges which, when built, were ten and twelve feet above the river bed. Now, I am told, they don't build bridges any more, but lay cement roads through the sand, clearing their surfaces after the freshets.
The Arkansas River once a mighty stream, has held out with more success than the Republican against the winds and drifting sands, but it is slowly and certainly disappearing, burying itself in the sand and earth it carries down at flood times—a work in which it is assisted by the strong, persistent prairie winds.
Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked to me so vast
The great wheat belt begins somewhere about the middle of the State and continues to the west. In the spring the wheat is light green in color and is flexible in the wind so that at that time of year, the resemblance of the prairies to the sea is much more marked, and travelers are often heard to declare that the sight of the green billows makes them seasick. The season in Kansas is about a month earlier than in the eastern states; in May and June the wheat turns yellow, and in the latter part of June it is harvested, leaving the prairies brown and bare again.
The prairie land which is not sown in wheat or alfalfa, is covered with prairie grass—a long, wiry grass, lighter in shade than blue grass, which waves in the everlasting wind and glistens like silver in the sun.
Rain, sun, wind! The elements rule over Kansas. People's hearts are light or heavy according to the weather and the prospects as to crops. My Kansan friend in the observation car pointed out to me the fact that at every railroad siding the railroad company had paid its respects to the Kansas wind by the installation of a device known as a "derailer," the purpose of which is to prevent cars from rolling or blowing from a siding out onto the main line. If a car starts to blow along the siding, the derailer catches it before it reaches the switch, and throws one truck off the track.
"I suppose you've seen cyclones out here, too?" I asked the Kansan.