Of the actual metropolis of the great Empire State it is impossible to speak at any length in the limited space at one's command. Of New York itself, Mr. Chauncey Depew said recently, in his forcible manner, "To-day, in the sisterhood of States, she is an empire in all that constitutes a great commonwealth. An industrious, intelligent, and prosperous population of 5,000,000 of people live within her borders. In the value of her farms and farm products, and in her manufacturing industries, she is the first State in the Union. She sustains over 1,000 newspapers and periodicals, has $80,000,000 invested in church property, and spends $12,000,000 a year on popular education. Upward of 300 academies and colleges fit her youth for special professions, and furnish opportunities for liberal learning and the highest culture, and stately edifices all over the State, dedicated to humane and benevolent objects, exhibit the permanence and extent of her organized charities. There are $600,000,000 in her savings banks, $300,000,000 in her insurance companies, and $700,000,000 in the capital and loans of her State and National banks. Six thousand miles of railroads, costing $600,000,000, have penetrated and developed every accessible corner of the State, and maintain, against all rivalry and competition, her commercial prestige." CHAPTER IV. IN THE CENTER OF THE COUNTRY. The Geographical Center of the United States and its Location West of the Mississippi River--The Center of Population--History of Fort Riley--The Gallant "Seventh"--Early Troubles of Kansas--Extermination of the Buffalo--But a Few Survivors out of Many Millions. Kansas is included by most people in the list of Western States; by many it is regarded as in the extreme West. If the Pilgrim Fathers had been told that the haven of refuge they had selected would, within two or three hundred years, be part of a great English-speaking nation with some 70,000,000 of inhabitants, and with its center some 1,500 miles westward, they would have listened to the story with pardonable incredulity, and would have felt like invoking condemnation upon the head of the reckless prophet who was addressing them. Yet Kansas is to-day in the very center of the United States. This is not a printer's error, nor a play upon words, much as the New Englander may suspect the one or the other. There was a time when the word "West" was used to apply to any section of the country a day's journey on horseback from the Atlantic Coast. For years, and even generations, everything west of the Allegheny Mountains or of the Ohio River was "Out West." Even to-day it is probable that a majority of the residents in the strictly Eastern States regard anything west of the Mississippi River as strictly Western.