es.

At intervals along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing
up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward
harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the
boundless swales of billowing wild grass; with all the other indications
of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the
progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest
agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two
hundred miles. Here and there we pass a lateral excavation in the face
of the bluff where some enterprising settler has opened a tertiary
coal-vein, a deposit of iron-ore, or a bed of soft limestone suitable
for both flux and mortar purposes. The way-freight trains that meet us
now are mainly laden with the wealth of the grazier, the farmer, and the
gardener, competing with their brethren of the Upper Mississippi for the
markets of St. Louis and New Orleans. Iron-ore, coal, and limestone may
form a portion of the cargoes,--but in process of time the mutual
vicinity of these minerals will become sufficiently suggestive to induce
the erection of smelting-furnaces _in situ_, and then their combined
product will travel the road in the form of pigs.

A little to the westward of a line drawn due south from Fort Kearney to
the Republican we shall find a comparatively abrupt and unexplained
change taking place in the scenery. Our green river-bottoms will give
way to tracts of the color and seemingly of the sterility proper to an
ash-heap. Our bluffs will recede, grow higher, and exchange their flat
_mesa_-like surfaces for a curved contour, imitating the mountainous
formation on a reduced scale. For long distances the vast gray level
around us will be dotted with conical sand-dunes, forever piling up and
tearing down as the wind shifts, with a tendency to bestow their gritty
compliments in the eyes of passengers occupying windward seats on the
train. The lovely blossoms of the running-poppy no longer mat the earth
with blots of crimson fire; no more does the sweet breath of eglantine
and sensitive-brier float in at the window as we whirl by a sheltered
recess of the divides; the countless wild varieties of bean and pea no
longer charm us with a rainbow prodigality of pink, blue, scarlet,
purple, white, and magenta blossoms. The very trees by the river's brink
become puny and stunted; the evergreens begin to replace the deciduous
growths; in th