On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Author:Laura Ingalls Wilder [Wilder, Laura Ingalls]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780064400800
Amazon: 0064400808
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1976-10-20T05:00:00+00:00


Kansas Avenue in Topeka, Kansas, as it looked when we passed through. R.W.L.

We camped by a schoolhouse in the southwest corner of Douglas County. There was good grass for the teams and a pump gushed out delicious cold, clear water. This is the best farming country we have seen yet, prairie with natural groves here and there and timber along the creeks.

As we came along the road Manly sold and traded a good many fire mats, and one farmer wanted to rent him a farm for a third of the crops. Another came to us at the schoolhouse where we camped, and wanted us to stay here and rent. We are going on to Missouri but may come back here if we do not like it there. Land here is worth $20 to $40 an acre.

August 16

On our way at 7:25. Fido is quite friendly this morning, he still seems sad but he has stopped trembling and seems content to sit in my lap and look at the country we are passing. The wheat crop is bountiful here and the corn crop is pretty good. There is a coal bank where men mine the coal and sell all they dig

for $1.25 a ton.

At 5 in the afternoon we came through Ottawa. There is a North and a South Ottawa, separated by the Maradegene River. They are the county seat of Franklin County. The men of Ottawa stole the county seat in the night, from another town, and for some time they had to guard it with the militia, to keep it.

The courthouse is quite an imposing building.

The Sante Fe Railroad hospital is in the north edge of North Ottawa, a large brick building. It looks very clean. In South Ottawa there is a handsome college building made of the native stone. In all the towns now there are many colored people.

We camped on the bank of Rock Creek in the suburbs of South Ottawa. Two men coming by stopped and looked at Prince for some time and as they went on the elderly one said to the other, “That is the nicest colt I have seen for years.” The hens are laying yet.

August 17

Fido is a good watch dog. He growls at every stranger who comes to the wagon, and at night at everyone that passes.

We started at 7:30. The wild morning-glories are rioting everywhere, all colors like the tame ones. We passed a large field of castor beans. They are raised here as a crop, they run 10 to 15 bushels to the acre and sell for $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. They are picked every two weeks, piled up in the sun till they pop open, then run through a fanning mill and sacked.

We reached Lane at 4 o’clock and had old Pet shod. The blacksmith came from Kentucky two years ago and looks just like the pictures of a Kentucky man. He has 130 acres of bottom land running down to Pottawatomie River, and a stone house as large as any house in De Smet.



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