1

1857.]

A BIT OF YANKEE INGENUITY.

35

We continued upon the rich prairie. Here the once powerful and warlike Delawares, dwindled to a few hundreds, after a long retreat before the fateful army of civilization had made their last stand, and were waiting certain extinction.

We crossed the old bed, now dry and grass-grown, where the Kansas river flowed within the memory of living Indians. A few miles further, after half an hour's ride through dense heavy timber, over a jet-black soil of incalculable richness, we reached its present channel. The Charon who ferried our coach over, had a rope stretched across the stream, connected by pulleys with another

rope extending from stem to stern of his long flat-boat. By turning the head of his craft in the right direction he forced the currant to propel it to and fro-a bit of Yankee ingenuity which brought little work and many dollars. It was trustworthy as steam power, and cheap as air. It was like harnessing the forces

36

HOW LAWRENCE WAS FOUNDED.

[1857.

of nature into a gig. Sneer not at its unknown inventor, unless thou too canst 'draw out leviathan with a hook, or his nose with a cord which thou lettest down.'

We landed in Lawrence, the pioneer settlement. One night in 1849, when this was unknown Indian territory, a party of over. land emigrants for California chanced to camp near the Kansas river. One, Charles Robinson of Massachusetts, was deeply im pressed with the beauty of the spot. The next morning the emigrants pressed on. They made scores of camps thereafter, on prairie slopes, in green valleys, among mountain glens, and by singing streams. They had the pleasure and peril, the suffering and adventure of all that Early Migration—that modern crusade whose unwritten history matches every marvel recorded in literature, from the Arabian Nights to the Book of Martyrs.

When the goal was reached, Robinson took part in the most stirring scenes of California. Among other experiences he was shot in a Sacramento riot arising from a conflict about real estate titles. The ball passed through his body, entering the stomach and coming out at his back; but he seemed bullet-proof and soon recovered. Speculators had laid out a city, and held property at high figures. But it was upon Government land to which they had no perfected title. So other settlers 'squatted' upon the lots, built houses, and claimed ownership; hence the Sacramento war. The courts sustained the speculators, and Robinson was imprisoned as a ringleader in the riots. But the squatters, who were largely in the majority, elected him to the legislature while he was still in bonds: so the governor pardoned him out, and he left his cell among the law-breakers, to take his seat as one of the law-makers.

Robinson returned to his New England home: but that shirt of Nessus, the restlessness born of border life, made him one of the earliest emigrants to Kansas. Through all the years, that green prairie by the softly-flowing river, had been photographed in his memory. Thither he led his company of pioneers, and there they founded the first town in Kansas.

Five miles south ran the little Waukarusa. Pleased with the name, they gave it to their nascent city. Their first Herald of Freedom-for newspaper is mother's milk to an infant townbears date 'Waukarusa, Kansas Territory, October 21, 1854.'

1857.]

AND HOW IT WAS NAMED.

37

But the settlers soon learned this unromantic legend of the ori

'WAU-KA-RU-SA.'

gin and significance of the name:-Many moons ago, before white men ever saw these prairies, there was a great freshet. While the waters were rising, an. Indian girl on horseback came to the stream and began fording it. Her steed went in deeper and deeper, until as she sat upon him she

was half immersed. Surprised and affrighted she ejaculated 'Wau-ka-ru-sa!' (hip-deep.) She finally crossed in safety, but after the invariable custom of the savages, they commemorated her adventure by re-naming both her and the stream, 'Waukarusa.' On reflection, the settlers decided not to perpetuate the story, and changed the name of their town to Lawrence, in honor of one of its most generous patrons, Amos Lawrence of Boston.

It had two weekly newspapers, a Congregational and a Unitarian church, five or six religious societies, and a large school-room, well furnished, through Boston liberality. On Massachusetts street were the ruins of the Free State Hotel, and for one-third of a mile on both sides, rows of frame trading-houses, with three or four brick and stone buildings, interspersed with a few pioneer log-cabins. On the elegantly lithographed map of the town the other streets were systematic and regular. But actually their buildings were too few and far between to indicate the thoroughfares at all. The eye only saw a smooth expanse of prairie dotted with a few plain frame dwellings. Lots were selling at from two hundred to two thousand dollars each, while wretched shanties, which could not have cost one hundred dollars, commanded eight dollars per month.

Lawrence was already historic. Here, in 1854, the vedettes and scouts and advance guard of Freedom in the great conflict,

38

A SCENE OF SURPASSING BEAUTY.

[1857. stimulated by the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, pitched their tents. Here, in 1855, armed Missourians took possession of the polls, and, later, placed the town in a state of siege; and men were killed on both sides. Here, in 1856, after a Lecompton grand jury had indicted as a nuisance the Free State Hotel, (a curiosity in legal proceedings,) and the citizens had given up their arms under promises of protection to person and property, the invaders blew up the hotel, burned the house of Governor Charles Robinson, destroyed two printing offices, and plundered stores and dwellings. Then blazed the flames of civil war.

Now they were extinguish

ed, or only smoldering. The hotel ruins and two mud forts remained relics of those stirring times. Yet no halo of romance clothed the miry streets and rude scattered buildings. All was prosaic and commonplace, from the soiled floors and little dingy sleeping-rooms of the public houses, to the horse traders and town-lot speculators along the thoroughfares.

But at sunset climbing Mount

Oread, still crowned by Lane's old stone fort, I viewed an evening picture of surpassing beauty. The site of Lawrence would have charmed Gibbon's irreverent monarch who declared that the Almighty never could have seen the kingdom of Naples, or he would have placed the Garden of Eden there. Nature made this for a city. It is flanked by terraced hills for suburban dwellings, commanding pleasant views of the town below. On the north glides the dark Kansas, with deep forest beyond. Toward the south, smooth prairie affords amplest room for expansion. From the rude hill-top fort, while day died and twilight faded, my eyes lingered upon the enchanting landscape,

'Till clomb above the eastern bar,

The hornéd moon and one bright star.'

1857.]

A WAR REMINISCENCE.

39

CHAPTER III.

FROM Lawrence, I took stage for Topeka, thirty miles further up the Kansas river. We passed a log-house, the home of Colonel Titus, a notorious Pro-slavery leader. One morning he offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the head of Samuel Walker, captain of a Free State company. According to an old East Indian officer, 'Hunting the tiger, gentlemen, is capital sport; but sometimes the tiger turns to hunt you, and then it isn't so funny.' This was precisely the experience of Titus. That very day with a party of followers, he was surrounded and besieged by Walker's men in his little dwelling. Its logs were bullet-proof; but through the cracks between them whizzed and whirled and screamed leaden missiles from the Sharpe's rifles of the assailants, who lay in the tall prairie grass. The Border Ruffians vigorously returned the fire; but every flash from the house was answered by a dozen from the prairie, and many a halfounce ball came tearing in, wounding a man or plowing up the floor.

Titus received one of these ugly visitors in his own arm, and before night a white flag floated from the beleaguered cabin. The attacking party ceased firing, and approached. One by one, the inmates came out and gave up their arms. Titus did not appear, and it was feared he had escaped. But at last he was dragged forth from a closet. His boots and coat had been thrown off, and his shirt sleeve was red with blood. Running up to Walker, and clinging to his garments, he entreated,

'For God's sake, captain, don't let them kill me! Remember that I have a wife and children. For God's sake, save my life!' Knocking down one of his own men, who attempted to shoot