A Ride Through Kanzas, Nebraska City.

[The following letters were originally published, with the signature of Worcester, in the New York Tribune.]

Nebraska City is a handful of one-story cabins, interspersed with an equal number of magnificent distances, all beautifully situated on a bluff overlooking the muddy Missouri. It has one or two groves of “timber” about it, and there are noble woods on the rich bottom-land across the river. The village itself, like other Western villages, has a tavern and three or four land offices, and the principal pursuit of the inhabitants consists in sitting on the doorsteps of these structures, waiting for real estate to rise. It does rise, however, very fast, and the name of the settlement may be more veracious at some future time. At present, in this region, if a place is tolerably large, it is called a town. If otherwise, something must be done for it, and it is christened Something City.

This is a good way into the Far West. From childhood I had learned by Worcester’s Geography that Council Bluffs was the extreme verge of the imaginable horizon. When at last the stage rolled me in there, I felt as strangely as a little boy on the Canada Railway, who, as the conductor shouted the name of the little village of London, sprang up, half awake, behind me, exclaiming, “Do we really pass through LONDON, that great city!”

Set it down as a general rule that all statements of Iowa Kanzas Committees in regard to stage routes are incorrect; and in fact those of everybody else, for the only fixed rule of the Western Stage Company is to do nothing to-day, as it was done yesterday. And as each driver goes but ten or fifteen miles, and knows nothing beyond his own route, and as the agent at each end hardly knows that, it is impossible to state at any given moment what will be done. When the stage ought to go, it stops, and when it should stop, it goes. No wonder, then, if Kanzas Committees are wrong, when nobody is right. But it may save some disappointment if I say that there is not a single direct stage route across Iowa to Nebraska City, of any sort, and that whether one starts from Iowa City or Mount Pleasant, it is equally necessary to bring up at Council Bluffs, and thence get down the river as one can, the best way being to take a stage which leaves twice a week for Sidney, at the convenient hour of midnight. Sidney is fifteen miles from this city, and one must choose between a private conveyance thence, and a hack which is said to run twice a week with the mails.

There is thus no stage line over the greater part of either route, and this is a great inconvenience. A route has been talked of in the newspapers, and even announced in handbills, running directly from Mount Pleasant to this place, through the second tier of Iowa counties, but I am satisfied that there is no prospect of its being opened. In the mean time, the one hope of Kanzas emigration is the Burlington and Missouri Rivers Railroad. Let Eastern capitalists remember this.

At present no person, without actually travelling across Iowa, can appreciate the injury done by the closing of the Missouri River. Emigrants must toil, week after week, beneath a burning sun, over the parched and endless “rolling prairie,” sometimes seeing no house for a day or two together, camping often without wood, and sometimes without water, and obliged to carry with them every eatable they use. It is no wonder that they often fall sick on the way; and when I consider how infinitely weary were even my four days and nights of staging, (after as many more of railroad travel,) I can only wonder at the patience and fortitude which the present emigrants have shown.

As soon as one approaches the Missouri River, even in Iowa and Nebraska, he begins to feel as if he were in France or Austria. Men are very cautious in defining their position, and wait to hear what others will say. Then, perhaps, their tongues are slightly loosed, if they think there are no spies about them. But it is no slight risk when a man may have to pay with his life, further down the river, for a free word, spoken at Council Bluffs or Sidney, both Pro-Slavery towns.

The first night I spent in this place, it seemed as if a symbolical pageant had been got up to remind me where I was. I sat writing by an open window in the beautiful moonlight. A party of boys in the street were shouting and screeching, playing “Border Ruffian,” and “storming a fort.” In a building beyond, two very inexperienced performers played martial tunes with a drum and fife. Within, the small tavern rocked with the music and dancing of a border ball. Thus I sat between tragedy and comedy.

But there is plenty of genuine tragedy. Coming from a land where milionaires think themselves generous in giving fifty dollars to Kanzas, I converse daily with men who have sacrificed all their property in its service, and are ready at any hour to add their lives. Refugees come every few days from Leavenworth City, and tell, with a quiet desperation, of the wrongs and outrages there transacted. “Come, Uncle George,” says the latest informant, “have a seat on this log, and I ’ll tell you all about it.” So Uncle George sits down, takes out his long jack-knife, selects a convenient stick, and begins to whittle. The informant takes out his knife, and follows suit, and a few bystanders settle down and begin to whittle likewise. Then comes the story, “all which he saw, and part of which he was”—how the Missourians came over to vote, and voted—how enraged they were that the Free State men would not vote—how they collected in mobs at last, maddened by whiskey—how they went from house to house and shop to shop, while men took their wives and children to the fort, and fled themselves—how they tarred and feathered one of Uncle George’s friends, and ran another out of town, and murdered another—how, like devils, they behaved inside his handsome house, destroying what they could not steal, and trying at last to set it on fire. “Your loss can’t be less than $6,000, old fellow,” concludes his frank informant, who has himself lost that or more, “even if they did n’t burn your block of stores, which they allowed to do after I left.” Uncle George hears it all in silence, whittles faster or slower according to the excitement of the narrative, and quietly says at last, with a slight moisture in the corner of either eye, “Well, my old woman was out of it, anyhow.”

Meantime, in regard to Topeka and Lawrence, the accounts are somewhat confused even here, only one hundred and twenty-five miles off. The last arrival left Topeka on Friday, Sept. 5. He reports the condition of affairs such as you have doubtless had narrated before now. The fortifications around Lawrence, and so on;—the people provided with beef and potatoes, but entirely out of flour and of lead. As to the road between here and there, he saw fewer Missourians than previous parties have seen; and there is reason to think that Richardson’s bands have been drawn off for a time, to re-enter at a time agreed upon—probably when their spies report that our emigrant train is ready to set forth—though if it amounts to half their number, it is not likely that they will dare to attack it.

The train is passing through here piecemeal, on its way from a temporary encampment at Tabor to another at the Little Nemaha, twenty-five miles south of this place. The largest section of it is a party of some fifty Massachusetts and Maine men. Having personally assisted in organizing this party and starting them from Boston, I can testify to their character. Some of them own their own wagons and bring pecuniary means with them; others have only brave hearts and strong bodies; and they complain of nothing but the long delay, as they left July 24. Beside these, there are smaller parties from Vermont, Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, who bring much valuable property. When we are all collected on the Little Nemaha, I shall, perhaps, have time to write more definitely as to the numbers of the train, which will probably count up to several hundred.

Every one admits the fine appearance and excellent conduct of the whole party thus far. Even the mean editor of The Nebraska News, a little Administration paper published here, can find nothing against the emigrants, except that they look dusty and ragged. Probably he would prefer them if they had tramped across three hundred miles of prairie in ruffles and patent leather. But the article has been of use in the reaction which it has produced. Even Pro-Slavery men here see that it may injure the place, though not the emigrants, and the first citizens are signing a protest against it. The fact is, that an effort is already being made to turn the emigration through Plattsmouth, (where the ferry is better than here,) and the people of this village perceive where their interest lies. The train will spend some $2,500 or more here, first and last, and not the slightest disorder has yet been charged on a single member of the company. If the market were larger, our purchases would be larger also. I have myself bought up for the emigrants all the cowhide boots to be found in town, (except extra sizes,) and nearly all the flannel shirts and blankets.

Missouri, however, expects to rule Iowa and Nebraska, as well as Kanzas. It is openly threatened that the new steam ferry boat, now being built at St. Louis, shall never come up the river to be used in carrying emigrants; and this is fast converting the owner of the ferry, born in Missouri, and hitherto Pro-Slavery, into an Anti-Slavery man. The Missourians also threaten to attack Tabor, Iowa, which is only some twenty miles from the border, and which is an Anti-Slavery town. Indeed, the citizens of Tabor are entitled to everlasting gratitude for their unwearied kindness to our emigrants. The sick have been cared for, clothing has been made, and every house, stable, and melon-patch, has been common property. Let the Eastern States hold this thriving little village in grateful remembrance.

I am here as a sort of General Agent, to put the train through, and shall, of course, go in with it, to Kanzas.