EMIGRANT LIFE IN KANSAS.*
IN personal narrative—which, by the way, is becoming a con- stantly increasing branch of English literature—what ought the intelligent reader to look for ; what qualities, and in what order P We should answer,—Genuineness and simplicity, at all hazards. Unless he is assured of these in the first few pages, he had better close the book and save precious time. No good will come out of it for him. Scholarship, if he can get it ; the side-lights which high cultivation will throw, on no matter what humdrum or out-of-the-way sides and corners of human life, are of all but the highest value. Fine-writing, hobby-riding, and the like, if he cannot help it. These must often be encountered now-a-days, even in narratives otherwise worth reading ; but then, there is the ronedium non legendi in our own hands. He is a poor reader who has not learnt the art of skipping. He will not have to exercise it, however, over the book before us. If he is really interested in the subject of emigrant life,—as few of us can help being, when the stampede amongst our boys seems to have become epidemic—he will read it from cover to cover. It is not the work of a cultivated man ; indeed, one runs too frequently across such phrases as, "The majority of our luggage" (p. 4), and "I liked John first-rate" (p. 170). But then, it quite fulfils our first condition, being a thoroughly genuine and simple narrative of some years of rough life, in a part of the North-West which seems likely to be at least half filled by Englishmen within the next decade.
A more hopeless party of emigrants than that in which our author started, in November, 1870, probably never left the old country. He was then twelve years old, and went with his father, a brother of ten, and three young men, a printer, a shorthand-writer, and the son of a Sussex farmer, the last- named being the only one of the party who "knew a plough from a harrow." His father, the leader of the party, had been an upholsterer in a large way of business, who, having always had a taste for a wild life, which he had hitherto been entirely unable to indulge, took the opportunity of a tire, which destroyed his place of business, to start for the West, thus accompanied. They took with them "about enough luggage to stock a colony, all packed in ten great cases, four feet long by two feet six inches square," the greater part of the contents being useless ; and for artillery, "four double-barrelled shot-guns and two rifles, as well as seven six-chambered re- volvers," and each of them "sported a tremendous jack-knife, too large for the pocket, and so worn with a cord, sailor-wise !" How a party so constituted and equipped managed to get • Emigrant Life in Kansas. By Percy G. Ebbutt. London : Swan Sonnenseae!IL and Co. through New York, to Junction City, Kansas, and thence out on to a prairie farm seven miles from the nearest (so-called) town, in Morris County, on the river Neosho, "sometimes called No- Show,' as in summer it generally goes dry," may be read in the pages of Mr. Ebbutt. The feat was accomplished by February 18th, 1871, when they arrived on the bare prairie site, in two waggons, with all the luggage, and "boards to build our house with." The first " house " (a one-roomed shanty) was so low that the men of the party could not stand upright in it ; but it served its temporary purpose well enough. Luckily, the winter was a remarkably mild one ; and though there were a few "cold snaps," in one of which the author awoke with eighteen inches of snow on his blankets—he being asleep in the new house in process of erection before the roof was on—they escaped being frozen to death, or even frost-bitten. The new house consisted of a living-room fourteen feet by twelve, with an attic of the same size above, "reached by a series of holes cut in the wall for hands and feet, which led to a trap-door in the ceiling, so that no room was lost by a flight of stairs." (p. 22.) This house, wretchedly cold at first, was improved by putting earth between the matchboards and the outer boarding.
How the author and his brother Jack came by degrees to realise that life on the prairie was not "all fun and adventure ;" how they learnt to ride and plough, and herd cattle; how they encountered snakes, wolves, coyotes, badgers, and, on the whole, prevailed against them ; and how they became good hands for all the rough farming work, must be read in the book itself, and is well worth reading. We have only room for one specimen of their education by experiment, and will take Jack's specula- tion in geese, of which he bought three, "but was not very successful with them ; for one was carriel off by a wolf, the old gander was killed by a stray dog, and the other stupid old goose took to sitting, and there she sot and sot' till she died,— literally of starvation, despite all our efforts to make her feed." Thus ended Jack's speculation.
They were the first to settle in their section ; but soon neigh- bours began to arrive,—" Prairie Wilson," and the Dysons, Dutch Jake, and Olaf Swain son, all of whom are worth knowing, and are well characterised in a few sentences. But it must have been a high time for the two boys when the Quinn family arrived, Irish-Americans with eleven children, who broke up some prairie, built a house with the sods and a few boards for the roof, and soon were able to live on the produce of their land. Here our author and Jack, his brother, used to have rather a jolly time. The old lady would tell us to come over and tear around with the boys," and we used to "be fond of tearing round." This, we should say, was more than their pony Barney was, for part of the tearing round consisted of bathing in a part of the neighbouring stream deep enough to swim a horse. Into this Barney was driven or coaxed, and then" two or three boys would get on his back, and one or two more have hold of his tail, and sail round the pond." The only "tearing round" in which the Quinn boys could not take their share was sliding in winter-time, for their father found "it wore out boots too much, and made them stop it ; so, after trying it bare-footed, and finding that it wouldn't work, they were obliged to give it up." Bat the wild Quinn boys had a shrewd instinct for the quality of their surroundings. "They've two kinds of sugar," was their comment on the Saumarez family, a new arrival, "and don't they jest look at yer if you put white sugar in your coffee, or yaller sugar in your tea!" (p. 56.) For some years social gatherings were rare events, but soon got more common as the country filled up. The "Puritan father" element prevailed, however, at first, which tolerated "socials," even when "kissing in the ring" formed part of the entertainment, but drew the line at dancing. Sometimes, how- ever, the host would say, "Jack, just you watch till you see the pious folks about to git, and then you ride off like the dickens for a fiddler, while I walk around and tell the gals that ain't too good that we're going to have a dance. You bet we'll have a high time yet." And so they often did. We have left ourselves no space to follow our author into his gleanings in natural history, which form an interesting part of the book, though we confess as to some of them—such as the rattlesnake occupying one of the teats of a sleeping sow with nine little pigs, while the tenth, the disinherited, bewailed his fate looking over his mother's neck (p. 63)—that we, like the author, could scarcely believe without having seen. One of the best woodcuts in the book, from a drawing, we presume, of the author's, of which there are several, depicts this incident very graphically. After six years or so (for
the dates are mixed), the great curse of the West, the grasshoppers, fell upon this part of Kansas, in their passage from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, a flight 200 miles broad, by 20 deep, clearing everything, from fruit-trees to tobacco, and leaving famine in their wake. (p. 132.) After this, our author hired himself out as a cowboy, and saved his wages (some 27 dollars per month), intending to go to a good school at Junction City in the winter months. On returning home, he was required to share his earnings with his brother Jack, which not only upset his plans for improving his education, but so outraged his sense of justice that he went off ; and after earning enough as a cow. boy and general help at divers stations, came home to his mother in England, and wrote out his experiences for the benefit of intending emigrants.
These (pp. 229-33) are thoroughly sensible, and well worth the careful study of young Englishmen bitten with the roving gadfly. They may be summed up in a couple of sentences. Shun advertisements. "Farming taught ; premium, £10 to 250, &c. This is a gross swindle ; for a man, no matter how green he may be in farming matters, is always worth his food and lodging," out West. And "if you are willing to work, you need never despair of getting a livelihood." "Show yourself willing to be taught, and you will find the settlers always ready to help you on."
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