piece of leather strapped to the foot. The palm-tree is alone needed to complete an Oriental picture.

When I left the mild climate of sunny Mexico, I soon found myself in the regions of snow and ice again. After a short stay in Pueblo, we passed one thriving town after another as we followed the windings of the Arkansas—a change indeed from the days when the riotous Kansas cowboys used to ride up from their cattle ranches with pistols in both hands, which they would fire as they galloped through the streets and cleared the town! Peace and order now prevail; schoolhouses abound, and prosperity has been insured by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad, which brought civilisation into the heart of this rich country. The dry plains and the prairie grass have been transformed into fields of corn, and to-day Kansas stands to the front among the agricultural States. At Manhattan there is an excellent State Industrial College, which affords a complete course of great practical value. The Makin Ranche, owned by some young Englishmen from Liverpool, is well worth a visit from those interested in stock-raising; and Mr. G. H. Wadsworth, who has a splendid farm in Pawnee County, says he considers Kansas better than any other State for the wool business. All that is now wanted is population, and settlers are really invited, not to the difficulties of pioneer life, but to a land which is fruitful in many directions.

For those who like out-of-door life and cattle-raising, Kansas undoubtedly offers a good opening at the present time. There are still 3,000,000 acres of land in the Arkansas Valley for sale, at from one to ten pounds an acre, the prices being regulated by the quality of the land and distance from a railroad dépôt, and the Homestead Law still gives a settler,

CHAP. XVI.

KANSAS CITY.

259

on condition of five years' residence, 160 acres at a fee of twenty dollars to the land office, but it is found better to purchase land near the railroads than to accept a grant of land at a considerable distance from one.

The Union Dépôt in Kansas City presents a busy and confusing scene. The first time I stopped there I thought I had fallen upon some special day, but subsequent visits proved to me that it was simply wearing its usual aspect. The waiting-rooms are invariably crowded, and if you have to travel by a train which discards the use of a Pullman carriage, your lot is not an enviable one, unless indeed you wish to study life in its very roughest phases.

The live-stock trade of Kansas City was estimated at 65,000,000 dollars for the year 1882. Seven hundred head of Scotch cattle were imported by one firm last year; their thick, heavy hides make them great favourites on the plains, as they resist the storms which sometimes prove so fatal there. In fact, now that the financial cloud has lifted, immigration to Kansas means prosperity, if the settler is gifted with that rare quality which Americans designate as snap." Men without energy will experience as much disappointment in the New World as in Europe, but those who are prepared to take proper advantage of the resources America affords cannot fail to command success. They find there five times as many acres of fertile land as in Europe, five times as many miles of railroad, telegraph and telephone lines, five times as many steam-engines, mowing, reaping, and thrashing machines, and ten times as much coal, which means mechanical power, manufacturing production, and industrial wealth. The United States has an acknowledged leadership in inventive genius, and, as Dr. Hittell observes,

"these are the arms with which the struggle for life in the battle of the future is to be fought."

Kansas must look to its laurels as a great cattle-market, for in Wyoming there are thousands of miles of the cheapest grazing land in the world. Efforts are now being made to import young stock to England, as the cattle can be reared at a small cost in the north-western territory, though it cannot be fattened there as well as here. The Canadian authorities make no difficulty about allowing the cattle to pass through that country, which is a test that no danger is feared in the Dominion of the pleuro-pneumonia which sometimes proves so fatal in the Eastern States. While Mr. Frewen is thus fighting for Wyoming, Mr. Hugh A. Fergusson is anxious to promote the importation of young cattle from Texas and New Mexico, and states that it will be impolitic to admit one State more than another, that the importation of young stock from America would certainly enable the English farmer to realise a higher profit out of his land and cattle than he can at present. "We will," says Mr. Frewen, “rear millions upon millions of store cattle, and then send the lean but full-grown stock back to the homes of their ancestors to be finished artistically for your market. We will breed and rear for three or four years the young stock, which you will fatten off in from ten to twenty weeks. That is all that your farmers will have to do in the production of beef. The slow process of growth will go on in regions where land can be had for next to nothing. The rapid process of forcing will take place under conditions which enable it to be performed at a maximum of speed."

I greatly enjoyed my visit to the Kansas State University, which is situated at Laurence, with its splendid

CHAP. XVI.

TOPEKA.

261

lecture-hall holding 1500 people, crowded with a most agreeable audience the night I lectured there, notwithstanding a wind that nearly blew the carriage over as I drove up Mount Oread, on the summit of which the handsome building stands. In the natural history department there are more than a hundred thousand specimens of beasts, birds, and insects representing the animal life of the great Mississippi valley; there is also a fine laboratory and a rapidly improving library. The newly appointed Chancellor, Dr. Lippincolt, is a clear-headed, cultured man, in whose hands its future is secured.

Topeka has one of the handsomest free libraries I saw in America, erected by some of the rich men connected with the railroad. There is a large reading-room in the building itself, and residents are also allowed to take books home; the interior is fitted up with excellent taste, and the lecture hall has a model stage, which made me think of the Haymarket Theatre under the Bancroft rule. Thanks to Mr. Wilder-a descendant of the Berkshire Wilders-this hall is filled with choice engravings and etchings, which he has lent for the benefit of his fellow-townsmen. Sometimes it is hired for an assembly ball, and many pleasant dances have been enjoyed this winter on that polished floor. It is difficult to believe that this is Kansas-till recently the home of the prairie-dog, rattlesnake, and buffalo!

CHAPTER XVII.

Divorce-Journalistic announcements, advertisements, and paragraphs— Two strange divorces followed by re-marriages-Divorces traced by the American press to the increase of mercenary marriages—Dr. Dwinell's statistics-Chief Justice Noah Davis at the Nineteenth Century Club Meeting on divorce-Mr. Charles Stuart Welles-The New French Law—The Rev. Robert Collyer-The moral effect of the Divorce Court in England.

THERE are many journalistic head-lines which strike the English reader of American newspapers with considerable amazement, but none have appeared to me more singular, or more indicative of the popular sentiment on the subject with which they deal, than the extraordinary headings to the columns devoted to information respecting divorce cases.

"Untying Wedding Knots," for example, at once carries with it the idea that an element of positive festivity mingles with the dissolution of the ties that bound two people together in holy matrimony, in the presence of admiring friends and hopeful bridesmaids, while the "Divorce Mill" points significantly to the vast amount of business carried on by those entitled to divide married couples, to say nothing of sub-headings, "Separated for life in forty minutes," or "Three matrimonial smash-ups," which betokens a levity strangely out of place while dealing with a matter of such grave import.