We spent a day at Kansas City, not from choice, but because there was no connecting train to take us on to Fort Wallace, which was our destination. Kansas City, on the Missouri river, just below the mouth of the Kansas river, was at that time a thriving town risen five and twenty years earlier out of a howling wilderness and already boasting a population of forty thousand and representing a capital of some twenty million dollars. Mr. Reavis, the author I have just quoted, says: “Its splendid buildings, its many railways, its increasing wealth and sleepless enterprise, challenge the admiration of the East as well as of the West.” A shot fired from a long bow indeed! After reading such a description it was startling to see pigs picking up a luxurious living off the plentiful garbage strewn in that magnificent street the Broadway. The pigs were very real,—the splendid buildings, creations of Mr. Reavis’ fancy which must have been stimulated by hashish, for the deepest draughts of the rather thin “Imperial” would hardly account for such flights as this. “In the development of the great West, with its fertility of soil and boundless natural resources, Kansas City is bound to play a prominent part. She will grow with the growing country, increasing every day in wealth and power; she will wear the golden crown and royal purple, and be hailed Queen City of the Missouri Valley.” The prophecy was delivered forty years ago. I hope it may have come true, and that the descendants of the pigs of those days may now be suitably housed, grunting in comfortable sties. There was not much to do by way of killing time, so we wandered off at haphazard towards the wood-crowned bluffs round the town; our steps, as luck would have it, led us to Westport, a tiny village which was the original trading camp from which Kansas City sprang. The sun was hot, the road deep-rutted and dusty like the roads in the North of China round about Peking. To our joy when we reached the village we saw “Lager Bier” posted up over a little bar-room, so we went in thirsty and rather bored. The place was kept by the oldest inhabitant, a very aged German of whom nothing was to be seen save only a portentously thick red nose; the rest of him was hidden by a grey military great coat and cap, which seemed to grow out of a great shock mass of grizzled hair and snuffy beard, that probably no comb or brush had disturbed for years.