1859.] BEAUTY OF OUR INDIAN CORN. 203 The Platte valley, level as a floor from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri, is the best natural route for a railway in the world. Though without timber it is well supplied with grass, and it ranges from five to fifteen miles in width. At Fort Kearney, a Federal military post with wooden and adobe barracks, our road left the Platte. Soon the soil grew less sandy and more fertile. After we crossed the Blue rivers, dram-shops and paper cities-advance guards of civilization-began to appear; then occasional farms; then live towns and flourishing settlements. We were in the world again. Coming from rug. ged mountains and dreary deserts, the first grain field seemed to me the most beautiful of gardens. How little we appreciate the beauty of Indian corn! Few of our poets deign to mention it, though Holmes has a passing tribute: 'The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid In soft luxuriance on her harsh brocade.' A German florist after exhibiting to an American his rarest plants, added: 'Now I will show you the most beautiful of all;' and then conducted the visitor to a stalk of Indian corn. The American replied contemptuously that he had ridden for fifty miles through unbroken fields of that plant; but the German was not far wrong. We reached Leavenworth in six days and twenty hours from Denver, then the quickest trip ever made. 204 THE GREAT MISSOURI IRON MOUNTAINS. [1859. CHAPTER XVII. NEXT I visited the iron region of Missouri, eighty miles south of St. Louis, embracing Pilot Knob, Iron Mountain, and Shepherd's Mountain. These are eastern spurs of the Ozark hills or high table-lands which range from one thousand to one thousand five hundred feet above sea level. The St. Louis and Iron Mountain railway terminates at Pilot Knob, a conical hill of solid ore six hundred feet high, and covering three hundred and sixty acres. Only two furnaces were in operation, turning out about thirty tons of pig-iron per day. The sides of the mountain are covered with oak hickory and ash saplings. The summit is a mass of enormous bowlders fifty feet high, and upheaved into every conceivable position. Some stand erect, sharply defined pillars. Two, a few feet apart, form a gigantic natural gateway. Another huge slab leaning against a solid wall constitutes a picturesque cave. Though exposed to the atmosphere for centuries, these bowlders contain fifty per cent. of iron. Below the surface, the rock contains sixty per cent. The miners were digging horizontally into the mountain, drilling, blasting, and prying off great fragments of rock which fell crashing over a little precipice. In the pit below, some were breaking up these fragments with sledge hammers; others loading them into cars which conveyed the ore by an inclined-plane railway to furnaces at the base. In European mines the clothing of workmen is carefully examined at night, to see that they do not carry away ore. But here, a few hundred blocks as large as a dwelling house would not be missed. The laborers were French, German and Irish. Five miles further north is the Iron Mountain-a slight eleva 1859.] QUARRYING OUT THE IRON ORE. 205 tion over which the railway to St. Louis passes. Busy laborers were blasting out and breaking the ore, within a few yards of the Three years later, the entire tract sold for six hun dred dollars. Its present value is in quarter an acre. calculable; for it is the largest and richest mass of iron yet found upon the globe. Its base covers five hundred acres. The ore, which contains seventy-one per cent. of pure iron, has been penetrated nearly four hundred feet below the surface, with no sign of exhaustion even at that depth. In reducing, crude blocks one or two feet in diameter are placed upon a foundation of logs, in alternate layers of charcoal and ore, until they form a huge pile. For a month they are 206 TWENTY-SEVEN HUNDRED, FAHRENHEIT. [1859. exposed to a fire as hot as they can endure without melting. This expels impurities, and leaves the ore brittle and easily broken into lumps three or four inches thick. It is next hauled to the furnaces and cast into their fiery jaws together with limestone and charcoal in proportions varying with its quality. The furnaces are either 'hot blast' or 'cold blast,' according to the strong currents of hot or cold air pumped into them to supply oxygen, without which the ore would turn to 'cinder,' yielding no iron. The heat is two thousand seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The cinder, separating from the iron, rises to the surface of the molten mass, and is skimmed off. Some of it hardens into a dark mass resembling coke, coarse glass or variegated marble. But when the charges and blasts are properly adjusted, it is white as snow and like the most exquisite moss suddenly petrified. The ore remains in the furnace some twelve hours. Then from the bottom of the great crucible it pours a red, glowing stream into molds of sand where it hardens into 'pigs.' The workmen guide these dazzling currents of liquid fire into their proper channels with long-handled hoes. By night the furnace buildings,-with their brick arches, blackened roofs, clouds of smoke, fiery torrents and sooty workmen darting hither and thither, catching lurid gleams on their dark faces, are grotesquely suggestive of Pandemonium, and contrast sharply with the white villages and the dark wooded hills. Shepherd's Mountain contains rich ore, but has been little mined. All these iron hills are of volcanic origin. In 1866 the furnaces of Missouri turned out twenty-five thousand tons of do mestic iron. The State geologist reports in this vicinity sufficient deposits of ore near the surface to yield one million tons per annum of manufactured iron, for the next two hundred years! A few miles distant is the solid Granite Knob in the heart of a great limestone region-almost the only granite between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. On the fifteenth of August I again started for the far frontier. At Syracuse, one hundred and sixty-eight miles west of St. Louis, and then terminus of the Missouri Pacific Railway, I left the cars for a coach of the Butterfield Mail Company. 1859.] WARSAW'S LAST CHAMPIONS—AND SOAP. 207 Our coach, leaving Syracuse after dark, jolted along for fifty miles during the night, and at sunrise stopped for breakfast in Warsaw, Benton county-a genuine southern town, surrounding a hollow square with court-house in the center; streets gullied by water and overgrown with weeds; frame houses, log houses and stucco houses, with deep porticoes and shade trees; negroes trudg ing with burdens upon their heads; deserted buildings; tumbling fences and a general tendency to 'the demnition bow wows.' While washing on the hotel porch we asked the host for soap. LANDLORD, (imperious and tobacco-stained.)-Soap for the gentlemen. CLERK, (obsequious and flippant.)-Soap for the gentlemen. WAITER, (white-eyed and Ethiopic.)—Cook, bring soap for de gemmen and be quick about it! The cross-eyed cook, from Afric's sunny fountain, at last appeared with the longed-for article; but the incident was a shining illustration of the Institution. We forded the Osage though it is navigable above Warsaw for half the year. The region was hilly and rocky, intersected by many streams and timbered with a dozen varieties of oak; the houses long and low with outside chimneys; corn the principal crop; great numbers of cattle raised chiefly for the California market; and not more than one farmer in ten owning slaves. After passing some beautiful prairies and enduring another night of uneasy slumber, we woke in Springfield, on the summit of the Ozark Mountains the leading town of southwestern Missouri. Here was the office for the sale of Government land in that quarter of the State, amounting to three millions of acres. Some of this was subject to entry at twenty-five cents per acre; but settlers had secured the fertile tracts years before, and the residue was rough and sterile. Springfield had pleasant, vine-trellised dwellings, and two thousand five hundred people. The low straggling hotel with high belfry, was on the rural southern model: dining-room full of flies, with a long paper-covered frame swinging to and fro over the table to keep them from the food; the bill of fare, bacon corn bread and coffee; the rooms ill-furnished, towels missing, pitchers |