Nebraska to Kanzas.

I wrote last from Nebraska City, just before the train of emigrants left that place for this. I reached here yesterday, a day or more in advance of them, having pushed through, for the last two days, with a few companions. The distances on the route are about as follows:—To Camp Creek, or Worcester, twelve miles; thence to Little Nemaha River and Village, fifteen miles; to Archer, fifteen miles; to Plymouth, (Kanzas,) twelve miles; to Lexington, ten miles; to Indian Village, thirty-five miles; to Topeka, fifteen miles. This would make the whole distance one hundred and fourteen miles, and it is variously estimated from that up to one hundred and forty. The route is also somewhat circuitous, and will be shortened hereafter. The road is uniformly a good prairie road, except where a creek is to be crossed, and there is a steep pitch on each side, with a slough between. No serious accident, however, occurred to any of our teams. Of the localities above-named, Nemaha and Archer are thriving little Nebraska settlements, each with lodging-house and store. Worcester, in Nebraska, is one log-house. Plymouth consists of an earthen redoubt on a hill, and two log-houses in the distance. Lexington is a log-fort in the centre of a prairie, where seven of our brave Worcester boys were laboriously digging the best well I have seen in this region—thirty-five feet deep and nine wide. Both Plymouth and Lexington, however, are very favorable town sites, and well laid out. The companies who settled them are now returning from the seat of war, and if they can only obtain food and clothing during the winter, (a doubtful prospect,) these will yet be flourishing towns. That well of water, at least, will be a clear gain to Kanzas in all coming time.

Except these, there are no settlements over this long route till Indianola, a few miles from Topeka. There are occasional log-houses, however, and it is, on the whole, more inhabited than the western part of Iowa.

Our train included about one hundred and forty men and some twenty women and children. There were twenty-eight wagons—all but eight being horse-teams. Our nightly tents made quite a little colony, and presented a busy scene. While some watered and fed the stock, others brought wood for the fires; others prepared the tents and wagons for sleeping; others reloaded pistols or rifles, and the leaders arranged the nightly watch or planned the affairs of the morrow. Meanwhile, the cooks fried pork, made coffee, and baked bread, and a gaping crowd, wrapped in blankets, sat around the fire. Women brought their babes, and took the best places they could find, and one worthy saddler brought out his board and leather every night and made belts and holsters for the men. We slept soundly in spite of the cold and of the scarcity of wood, and each kept watch for an hour, striding in thick boots through the grass, heavy with frost. Danger always seemed before us, though we never actually got into it, and we were never far from our rifles and revolvers. Truth compels the admission that my rifle was never pointed at anything more formidable than a superb hawk, which it brought down, and even that shot was disputed by a comrade, who fired at the same time. However, I have the wings.

We came through without attack from the Missourians, as General Lane assured us that we should; we had had their spies among us, but they had seen that we were well armed, and that our men, though quiet, were determined.

The one thing that discouraged our party, however, was to meet other parties, day after day, returning. Men on horseback and on foot, with wagons and without, came along in ominous numbers. All told the same story. “What the Missourians have been trying for two years to do, Governor Geary has done in two weeks at last,” said one man; “the Free State men are driven out.” It was like entering Hungary just after the treachery of Görgey. Each had his story to tell of arrests and tyrrannies; how a Pro-Slavery witness had only to point at a man as identified with any measure of public defense, and he was seized at once. Several whom we met had been arrested in person, herded with a hundred others, like cattle, on the bare prairie, been scantily fed once a day, and escaped by rolling half a mile through the grass while the sentinels’ backs were turned. The bravest young men of Lawrence were put under arrest, charged with treason, murder, arson, robbery, and what not; while not a Pro-Slavery man was seized. This was the penalty they had to pay for defending themselves vigorously at last, and clearing their own soil from the invading Missourians. “The worst enemy Kanzas had ever had,” they pronounced Governor Geary to be; and they were going into Iowa to wait for better times. “Will you give up Kanzas?” I asked. “Never!” was the reply from bronzed and bearded lips, stern and terrible as the weapons that hung to the saddle-bow. “We are scattered, starved, hunted, half-naked, but we are not conquered yet.”

Some of these were young men, whom I had seen go from prosperous homes, well clothed and cared for. I had since heard of them performing acts of heroic courage in this summer’s battles. Lane had praised them to me, and declared that there never was such courage in the world as that of the Free State men of Kanzas. “I saw one of them,” said he, “ride up alone within thirty yards of a body of a hundred and fifty men, during an engagement, take deliberate aim, and bring one down.” I now saw that very man—that boy rather, a Worcester boy—retreating from his adopted country, hungry, ragged, and almost barefooted, walking wearily on, with others hunted like himself, while some, who had been less scrupulous, rode by on horses which they had plundered from the Missourians, who had first plundered them.

It was such processions as this which welcomed us to unhappy Kanzas. And when we reached the muddy banks of the world-famous river, we found not less than nineteen wagons of emigrants, fleeing with heavy hearts from the land of promise they sought so eagerly two years ago; a sad greeting for the families we brought in. “Truly,” said our informant, again, “The Free State men are leaving Kanzas at last; Governor Geary has conquered them.”

As Hungary, having successfully resisted her natural enemy, Austria, yielded at length to the added strength of Russia; so the Kossuths of Kanzas, just as they had cleared her borders of Missourians, are subdued by the troops of the United States at last.