s 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.

There is no doubt that when Horace Greeley told the young men of the
country to "Go West and grow up with the country," he used the term in
its common and not its strictly geographical sense, and many thousand
youths, who took the advice of the philosopher and statesman, stopped
close to the banks of the Mississippi River, and have grown rich in
their new homes. It cannot be too generally realized, however, that the
Mississippi River slowly wends i