Our return to the hotel was without accident, and our supper such as hungry hunters might well enjoy. After it was disposed of, we gathered around the ample stove in the hotel office, and lived over again the events of the day.
CHAPTER VI.
OFF FOR BUFFALO LAND—THE NAVIGATION OF THE KAW—FORT RILEY—THE CENTER-POST OF THE UNITED STATES—OUR PURCHASE OF HORSES—"LO" AS A SAVAGE AND AS A CITIZEN—GRIPE UNFOLDS THE INDIAN QUESTION—A BALLAD BY SACHEM, PRESENTING ANOTHER VIEW.
Next morning we said good-by to hospitable Topeka, and took up our westward way over the Pacific Railroad. An ever-repeated succession of valley and prairie stretched away on either hand. To the left the Kaw came down with far swifter current than it has in its course below, from its far-away source in Colorado. It might properly be called one of the eaves or water-spouts of the great Rocky Mountain water-shed. With a pitch of over five feet to the mile, its pace is here necessarily a rapid one, and when at freshet height the stream is like a mill-race for foam and fury.
At the junction of the Big Blue we found the old yet pretty town of Manhattan. To this point, in early times, water transit was once attempted. A boat of exceedingly light draught, one of those built to run on a heavy dew, being procured, freight was advertised for, and the navigation of the Kaw commenced. The one hundred miles or more to Manhattan was accomplished principally by means of the capstan, the boat being "warped" over the numberless shallows. This proved easier, of course—a trifle easier—than if she had made the trip on macadamized roads. If her stern had a comfortable depth of water it was seldom indeed, except when her bow was in the air in the process of pulling the boat over a sand bar. The scared catfish were obliged to retreat up stream, or hug close under the banks, to avoid obstructing navigation, and it is even hinted that more than one patriarch of the finny tribe had to be pried out of the way to make room for his new rival to pass.
Once at Manhattan, the steamboat line was suspended for the season, its captain and crew deciding they would rather walk back to the Missouri River than drag the vessel there. Soon afterward, the steamer was burned at her landing, and the Kaw has remained closed to commerce ever since.
About the same time, an enterprising Yankee advocated in the papers the straightening of the river, and providing it with a series of locks, making it a canal. As he had no money of his own with which to develop his ideas into results, and could command nobody's else for that purpose, the project failed in its very inception.
Fort Riley, four miles below Junction City, is claimed as the geographical center of the United States, the exact spot being marked by a post. What a rallying point that stick of wood will be for future generations! When the corner-stone of the National Capitol shall there be laid, the orator of the day can mount that post and exclaim, with eloquent significance, elsewhere impossible, "No north, no south, no east, no west!" and enthusiastic multitudes, there gathered from the four quarters of the continent, will hail the words as the key-note of the republic.