Kansas City was proud of its press. There were four daily papers published in English and one in German. I cannot honestly say that, whether regarded from the point of view of literature or as providers of news, they could claim any merit worthy of “The Queen City of the Missouri Valley.” Their columns were in the main stuffed with abuse of each other and a certain amount of padding of the giant gooseberry order. Their powers of vituperation were remarkable. The _Kansas City Times_, speaking of a rival, says: “For a low down, contemptible and insignificant journalism we award the palm to the _Kansas City Journal_. Its editor’s lack of decency is only equalled by his mental poverty.” The _Topeca Commonwealth_, speaking of a Mr. Griffin, says, “He is a dirty liar, a malicious libeller and a large-sized and highly-scented skunk—Mr. Griffin has not been heard from yet on this somewhat pointed argument.” Buffalo hunting—I suppose I ought to say Bison hunting, but I keep to the name made famous by Buffalo Bill and others—was one of the chief objects of our expedition. The Kansas and Pacific Railway hung out most tempting pictures of sport in the Wild West—all their stations had buffalo heads as advertisements with prodigious pictures of railway trains charging herds of myriads—“verra awkward for the coo.” In the afternoon, Mr. Weston, an Englishman in the employ of the railway, came to see us. It was early in the year for the trek northwards of the herds which had migrated to the South before the winter. However, Mr. Weston sent a telegram of inquiry down the line, and the happy answer came back from Fort Wallace, “Buffalo been seen within forty miles of this place.” So to Fort Wallace we determined to go. We started at nightfall and ought to have reached Fort Wallace in about twenty-four hours, but the line was obstructed by the breaking down of a goods train, so we had to undergo some thirty-two hours of very real discomfort, in the company of rowdy gamblers, the curse of those days in the West, women of no doubtful character and squalling children. The spitting of the gamblers was a fine art. During the day-time there was no consolation of fine scenery, for we were travelling through that most dismal wilderness the blooming prairie—of the night the less said the better. Travelling through the desert was something which no one will ever see again. The march of civilization has created a revolution in the whole aspect of the West. Cities have sprung up, farm steadings have been built, and the vast expanse which I have seen black with the wandering buffalo is now covered with waving crops. The buffalo has been improved off the face of the earth, only bred here and there in artificial reserves as a curiosity.