“If I could only make it seem as if we were going anywhere, I don’t think I should feel so tired,” said Alice, with a kind of weary bewilderment in the expression of her sweet countenance. Worn out as Katie was, she summoned a cheerful smile, and replied, “Keep up a brave heart, Alice, dear. Those who are going nowhere are pretty sure to arrive.” After eight days’ travel, they arrived at Kansas City, in Missouri. There they bade adieu to cars and steamboats, and entered the Indian Territory, closely stowed away in great wagons, covered with sail-cloth, and furnished with rough boards for seats. In some places the road swept along in graceful curves, through miles of smooth open prairie, belted with noble trees, and sprinkled with wild flowers, as copiously as rain-drops from a summer shower. The charming novelty of the scene was greeted with a child-like outburst of delight from all the weary party. Even the quiet, home-loving Alice, clapped her hands, and exclaimed, “How beautiful!” without adding with a sigh, “But it isn’t like dear New England.” William smiled affectionately at her enthusiastic surprise, and said, “Virtuous and industrious people can build up happy homes in such solitudes as these, dear Alice.” Anon, they descended into deep ravines, which jolted the rough boards, and knocked their heads together. Through these steep passes the wagons were jerked by patient mules, till they were brought into streams whose uncertain depths made the women and children scream; or into creeks sparkling in the sunshine, whose shallow waters covered holes, easier to pass by leaving the wagons, and jumping from stone to stone. Then scrambling up another steep bank, they found marks of wheels to indicate a road. They packed themselves into the huge wagons again, with their baskets and babies, bread and cheese, and went tumbling along with bonnets knocked into cocked-hats, and hats that had lost all appearance of being wide-awake. Katie was conjecturing, now and then, how many bowls and plates would arrive in Kansas unbroken; while Alice had a foggy idea that they were going nowhere; but there was a rainbow across the fog, because William was going there, too. Tired out in mind and body, they came at last to the river Wakarusa, which they crossed slowly at the fording-place, and rode up a bank that seemed steep enough to set the wagons on end. This brought them into fields of grass, dotted here and there with small cabins. To New England eyes it presented little resemblance to a village; but it was called a town, and bore the honoured name of Franklin. A few miles to the left, smoothly rounded hills rose on the horizon, terrace-like, one behind the other. Between those beautiful hills and the thickly-wooded banks of the river, was the infant town of Lawrence, the destined capital of Free Kansas.