its approval and its military aid; and, secondly, to the report and evidence of "the Special Committee appointed to investigate the troubles in the Territory of Kansas"-a report which, though dissented from by one member of the committee, contains testimony which can never be overthrown or gainsaid.

My simple object has been to show that the dark deeds of which I was an eye-witness in Kansas, some of which I have detailed in former chapters, are no darker than the public acts of the slave-power in that territory, as exhibited in the archives of its House of Assembly; and that the fearful anarchy and unrestrained lawlessness which reign throughout the territory find both their parallel and their key in the flagrant unrighteousness of their legal enactments.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Recapitulation. The "Bogus" Legislature.—Men and Things in Kansas.-Different Classes of Settlers.-Immense Extent of Country.-Physical Aspect.—Rivers.—The Kansas and Missouri.-Undulating Prairie.-Caravans.-Indian Tribes. -Fertility of the Soil.-Salubrity of the Climate.-Commercial Advantages.-The "mad Missouri."— Excellent Market.-"Nebraska Kansas Act."-A Race between North and South.-Pro-slavery Party in the Ascendant.-Struggle between the two Parties.-Tarring and Feathering.—Sale of a Free Man.—Model Legislators.-Discordant Elements. -Development.

IN my earlier chapters on the subject of Kansas, I attempted to depict some of the scenes of riot and exhibitions of maddened hostility which fell within my own experience as a traveller in that territory immediately after the burning and sack of the town of Lawrence. In others I have endeavoured to explain the extraordinary fact of such lawlessness being permitted, by showing from the statute-books of the territory that such acts were not the fruit of a sudden and exceptional outbreak of passion, but were the reflection of the deliberate injustice of

their legislative enactments. I have also indicated the fact that the Legislature, which has thus shamefully abused its power, is not the choice of the people of Kansas, but mainly of the inhabitants of an adjoining State, who controlled the elections by entering and voting in the territory in far larger number than the total of its own voting population. Further, that this Legislature-commonly called a "bogus," that is, a spurious Legislature possesses the sanction of the general Government, and the aid, consequently, of the United States troops. On the same ground, every act of the people of Kansas to gain for themselves a true representation and a better government is regarded as "treason" or "rebellion ;" and the leaders of such "rebellion" have, as in the instance of General Robinson and others, suffered, although untried, a long and painful imprisonment.

This fact of an unrepresented minority, or, with more truth, an unrepresented majority of the people of Kansas, is alone sufficient to shield the settlers in that territory from the charge of universally participating in this system of legalized ruffianism. There are, in truth, large numbers of people occupying claims in the territory, whose sole purpose

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evidently is to act as peaceful pioneers of civilization, by transforming the rich prairie lands of Kansas into a home for themselves and their children. In justice to these and all others concerned, I purpose devoting one or two chapters to a description of men and things generally in Kansas; comprehending, if possible, some description of the external aspect of the country, its towns and cultivation, with a more special portraiture of the classes of men there to be met-the Western settler, the Free-state advocate, the Southern planter, the border-man, and all other varieties of inhabitant that constitute the existing elements of Kansas society. This may meet the wants of those whose interest in the political struggle of which Kansas is the theatre may lead them to inquire what kind of appearance the place presents, and what objects meet the eye of one travelling in that distant territory.

And first, in addition to that which Kansas has of its own, those characteristics must be presupposed which it possesses in common with all the other vast territories of the American "far West." There is immense extent of country. Add together England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and the aggregate superficies will yield almost precisely the area

of Kansas; which, nevertheless, is small compared with its sister territory, Nebraska. There is interest attached to its physical aspect. Rivers of immense proportions roll their vast and muddy volume along, ordinarily at a great depth beneath the elevation of the general surface, through which they have cut their deep broad channel, leaving a margin of high bluffs, sometimes covered with a thick growth of cotton-wood and elm,-at others too steep to admit of more than the scantiest vegetation. Near these rivers, and especially on the borders of the Kansas and Missouri, are fine bottom-lands covered with a rich and most fertile soil, needing nothing but the plough to convert them into fruitful fields. Then follows prairie-beautiful, undulating prairie -here and there a grove of walnut, hickory, oak, or sugar-maple, but for the most part a broad treeless and shrubless pasturage, stretching its velvety surface of grass as far as the horizon, decked, too, at the spring season-when I saw it—with prairie flowers of every hue, and alive with the hum of insects no less variegated in colour and delicate in form. Let the traveller put himself upon one of the trains joining the caravan for Santa Fé, or Oregon, or Utah, and he may spend his month or six weeks