Counties. tional Census, and officially copied from the returns of the seventh Census, 1850. Population of Eight Counties in Missouri-Free and Slave. Counties. Counties. 909 Bates....... 1,776 Clay. Platte.... 214 2,917 1,896 6,782 4,135 16,500 281 964 518 2,524 4,931 8,149 2,623 611 2,473 2,477 4,945 7,964 14,006 4,481 1,167 4,113 2,052 8,536 17,688 25,532 1,625 441 1,676 1,062 4,73 6,424 13.419 4,517 1,396 3,905 2,840 7,925 14,784 28,312 3,221 1,111 2,988 1,837 6,824 13,281 19,806 6,288 960 5,505 3,647 11,256 20,234 45,133 Productions of Agriculture in Eight Counties Products of Industry in Eight Counties of Missouri, during the Counties. year ending June 1st, 1850. Bates has no Estimates returned. An hourly advancing and expanding growth enhances the value of a prosperity that thus shows so fair in the official tables made. more than two years since. But it is also much more and beyond this wonderfully happy and geographical position and the commercial centre of a growing external commerce, permanent in character, and compelled to have a rapid expansion for all future time. At the mouth of the Kansas river, eight miles west of Independence, the great Missouri coming from the north, bends to the east, and enters the State at a right angle. At the point of this right angle or elbow, it receives the Kansas river, a large stream which rises at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and runs due east across the Plains, being about seven hundred and fifty miles from its source to its mouth. But all along the southern rim of the Kansas basin runs a prairie crest, level and smooth, forming the divide of waters between it and the Arkansas river. This divide, throwing off a finger between the two little streams called the Blues, traverses Jackson county, and reaching the south bank of the Missouri, flattening out, becomes spacious and level, and at its contact with the river forms the site of Independence. This then explains the permanent excellence of geographical position. Upon this divide is located, and will forever remain, the great natural road of communication, both of travel and commerce, with the immense countries upon the waters of the Arkansas and the Kansas too-with Texas, with new and old Mexico, with California and Oregon; add also, the western portions of the States of Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana, everywhere of easy access on the prairie front. The cities higher up the river, as Weston and St. Joseph, are out of the central direction of Western travel, upon the east bank of the Missouri, which has to be crossed and the high bluffs and broken region extending into the interior from its western bank, to be overcome in an uninhabited, Indian country; whereas none of these serious disadvantages exist at Independence, owing to its admirable locality on the south bank and upon the point of a divide. This divide is also the most westwardly in the State, and the last one below the Kansas, leading out into the Great Plains. The St. Louis and Pacific Railroad touches the river at Indepence, which is the tap point to receive the produce of the whole immense country of the Missouri river above its elbow, and forward it to Eastern and Southern countries. This grand and glor ious Continental railroad, when it shall come from the tide ports of the Pacific ocean, to pour plenty over interior America, will here first strike the great navigable artery of the continent and let out its groceries and salt and abundant comforts upon the great river system of transportation! Thus is Independence city, the first great eastern terminus of the Pacific railroad, as it comes from that ocean to reach the navigation of the Atlantic waters! But the Territory of Nebraska about to be organized, the commanding portion of which will be the basin of the Kansas and the river country of the Missouri shore up to the mouth of the great Platte. Of this whole scope of wonderfully fertile country, Independence will become the commercial emporium, as St. Louis has similarly been for the countries west of it for the past twenty years. In four years there will be created out of a part of Nebraska, the great central State of Washington. This State will have the following boundaries: leaving Missouri at Fort Scott, and |