mense quantities of hay are stored. Some hemp is grown, and also tobacco; and bees are kept to a considerable extent. We passed a large bee-farm; and in a very inchoate skeleton village I noticed a beehive shop. In parts natural wood becomes pretty common, principally oak, especially near the Missouri River. To see the open prairie you must go far back from the railways. I am told that far away out in the south-west of Kansas State, upon the Arkansas River, is a very fine country of big-rolling prairie, with splendid soil, where a great wheat cultivation has been developed during the last six or eight years. Sometimes they suffer from drought, but usually there is rain enough for wheat. From all I can gather I understand that the rise to the foot of the Rocky Mountains is quite gradual, and that even when you come to the mountains the ascent on this side is comparatively gradual. Between this and the mountains is what is called the Great American Desert; but it now turns out that the desert is a myth-that there is no desert at all. Travelling along here I did not see very many cattle, but at all the stations there were pens and inclines for shipping cattle. I noticed a good many horses and many very fine mules; oxen do not seem to be used for draught in this part of the country. The cattle-drivers and farm-hands ride with wooden stirrups. You may see a man on horseback fetching in a cow. I stayed at Kansas City, which, by the way, is not in Kansas State at all, but in Missouri, on the borders of Kansas. There were many vehicles of all sorts, well horsed. Everyone seems to keep a horse; yet the price of a hack carriage is two dollars the first hour, and one dollar for every subsequent hour. The proprietors say they are obliged to take out licenses, which causes conveyances to be dear. I noticed here an ordinance against touting and soliciting custom, making it a misdemeanour. Apparently this is a municipal ordinance published by the Mayor and signed by the town clerk. The innkeepers' notice regarding liabilities for losses is a Missouri State Law (Revised Statutes of Missouri, chapter 79). Kansas City is on the Missouri River. I was very much disappointed with that river; it does not look very large. It is like an Indian river, with sandbanks in it; but I understand it does not rise so much. There are no steamers and apparently no navigation here, except a few mud-barges and small boats for local use. In fact, the river is not much used in this part of its course,

but it is more used higher up, and it is navigable throughout more or less. Occasional steamers pass up, and can go up a very long way-it is scarcely known how far. The Government send steamers up by the river route for supplying their far-away outposts in the far North-West, where there are no other means of communication. Kansas City is mostly on high ground. It seems a thriving place, nothing very remarkable about it, and is quite modern in its ways. I should not have known I was so far West. My hotel was the St. James's, on high ground, comfortable and moderate. I found that no paper is published on Monday morning, and I asked, "Why, are people too good to print upon Sunday?' The answer I got was, 'No, but they drink upon Sunday.' However, I did not see much of that, and rather think that my informant was unduly severe on his countrymen.

In the afternoon I visited the stock-yards, and then went on the Kansas side of the small river which here divides the two States. There were many cattle in the yards, and most of them seemed to be very well-bred animals-not very fat, but tolerably so. I understand that they will go to the American butchers at once. The greater number come from Texas, many also from Colorado. The cattle raised in Colorado are said to be the best-bred. Much good short-horn blood has, I believe, been introduced of late years. The cattle come here by rail. There is no grazing-ground along which they could be driven for two or three hundred miles from this. They are driven from Texas up to the railway, and then trucked. These railways have certainly led to the cultivation and civilisation of the country in a marvellous degree. Where a few years ago all was uncultivated and barbarous now things are almost as civilised as in an English town, to say the least. The bad spirits who hover on the borders of civilisation have gone farther West. To see the real West one must go much farther than Kansas City; but as my inquiries lie chiefly in another direction I have not gone farther.

In Kansas City, and still more in the suburbs of Kansas proper, the negroes are much more numerous than I have yet seen. On the Kansas side they form quite a large proportion of the population. They are certainly subject to no indignity or ill-usage. They ride quite freely in the trams and railways alongside of the whites, as I myself experienced, and there

seems to be no prejudice whatever against personal contact with them. I did not hear them at all abused or slanged. Coming along in the tram-car a cart was found standing on the line, and detained us some time. When the owner at last appeared he was a black man. A white waggoner in London would certainly have been most unmercifully slanged by a 'bus-driver, and would have deserved it; but our driver said nothing that I could hear. He may have moved his lips or said something low, but it was the negro I heard defiantly call out, 'What do you say?' Altogether, for such a place as this, there is surprisingly little shouting or slanging. So many crossings on a level would lead to endless bad language in London; but people in America seem much more on their good behaviour. The blacks are civil and attentive as waiters in the hotels and railway cars, but sometimes ill-mannered. The black porter in the Pullman car on my journey here slept on the passengers' seats, with his boots on the cushions, in a way that not every passenger, and certainly not a white. guard, would venture on; and he washed his own dirty hands in the passengers' washhand-basin before my face, before doing something wanted. The white railway conductors are generally civil and well-behaved, though they do not expect tips, as these ill-mannered blacks do. I am bound, however, to say that my subsequent experience did not confirm this view of the bad manners of the blacks.

Here the negroes seem to have quite taken to work at trades; I saw them doing building work, both alone and assisting white men, and also painting and other tradesman's work. On the Kansas side I found a negro blacksmith, with an establishment of his own; he was an old man, and very 'negro,' and I could only extract a little from him. He grumbled just like a white man-he made a living; did pretty well: But things are dear.' 'Well, they are cheaper than they were.' But then you are expected to work cheaper.' He came from Tennessee, after emancipation; had not been back there, and did not want to go. Most of the schools here are separate, and not mixed. Perhaps that suits best. Some black boys go, and some don't.' A black boy of about ten was standing by. That boy did not go. Could not say why. His father is a member of the School Board; and though he has several children, never sent one to school. I also saw black women keeping apple-stalls, and engaged in other such

occupations. In these States, which I may call intermediate between black and white countries, the blacks evidently have no difficulty. I am told that they work tolerably well, but, as it was put to me, they are not very 'forehanded.' They are content if they have enough for the time. However, my informant said there were a good many blacks in the further part of the Kansas State, who are doing pretty well, especially some who have small farms of their own.

The suburban cottages seemed to me very nice indeed, with trees and orchards, and shrubs and gardens; but, as it generally happens in the interior parts of America, they have not gardens such as our gardens, only fruit-trees, cabbages, Indian corn, pumpkins, &c., but very few flowers. Things are not quite so smart in Kansas as in the larger cities, but quite good and comfortable, and in the same style. There is a singular uniformity about everything in America, both in the food and style of the dishes and everything else. There are always very many dishes on the bill of fare; but in all places, and every day, they seem to be very much the same. One gets sick of looking at the list. The Americans seem to eat their meat underdone to a degree which somewhat astonished one. I was always rather fond of underdone meat, but I dare not ask for it underdone, or 'rare,' as they call it here, when the question is put as it usually is, for it is far beyond me. American ladies will eat, in the sweetest manner, meat which I could not touch. Prices here in the West are more moderate than in the Eastern cities. Board and lodging is only two or two and a half dollars a day, and a single meal about fifty cents. They seem very fond of English names; here, too, there is a Hyde Park.' At the hotel here the mutton is called Southdown,' and the cheese 'English dairy cheese.'

Next morning I started, on my return to Illinois, by another line, the Hannibal and St. Joe. This is one of the many competing lines which run east and west in this part of the world. It is surprising how many of them there are, and how difficult it is to choose between their relative merits. I think I have said that there are no books in the American hotels, but there is a great provision of railway advertisements, each railway not only advertising its merits, but enforcing them by a map, on which, by taking some slight liberties with geography, the particular line is shown broad, straight, tempting in

every way, while all the other lines are depicted as mean, circuitous, and inconvenient. In default of any other literature one is driven to devote one's evenings to the study of these railway lines. We crossed the Missouri River and ran through the interior of North Missouri. The river still looks not very large nor interesting. There are many bridges on both the Missouri and the Mississippi above St. Louis, though none below on the united streams. On crossing the Missouri we ran through some fine timber and some good green pasture, abounding in cattle; then through a good deal of broken ground and some swampy tracts; then a long tract of highish prairie country, very flat, with little roll, mostly cultivated; but there were some large natural pastures, generally enclosed. Near the Mississippi we dropped down into a heavily-wooded country, and through that to the river. I thought it beautiful. It is very broad and large, with wooded islands. To the eye it seemed to me larger than the Missouri. There were a good many steamers about, and I understand there is very much more navigation than on the Missouri. The river is navigable up to St. Paul's. We crossed it on a good light iron bridge to Quincy, in Illinois, which seemed a good and settled town. The Illinois country near it is quite a garden. I noticed besides the ordinary crops a few vineyards, a good deal of tobacco, and many good grass-fields. As we went on the country seemed very much the same as the part of Illinois I had seen before. We crossed the Illinois, a considerable river. Springfield, the political capital of the State, seemed a sort of exaggerated village, with rural-looking streets and houses. The roads are a great difficulty in these parts. There is no metal to be got, and the black soil, like the Indian soil of the same kind, is very good for mud-roads in dry weather, but wholly impracticable in wet weather. This accounts for the immense number of railways in this State. As long as we were in Missouri we saw a good many blacks. At one place the black passengers dined at a separate table; but in Illinois, in a country settled by whites, the blacks are rarely found -only, in fact, as hotel servants and suchlike. I understand, however, that in the southern part of Illinois blacks are numerous. At Cairo they load the vessels and do such work. I had occasion to ask at the hotel who cleaned the boots, that I might tip him. There is the gentleman,' said the landlord, pointing to a black, and apparently quite in earnest.

It