Across the continent Author:Samuel Bowles Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER II. FROM THE MISSOURI TO THE PLATTE. Fort Kearney, Nebraska, May 24. A Trifle short of two days has borne us two hundred and fifty miles, riding night... more » and day, to this point, which is the junction of the Omaha, Nebraska City and Atchison roads for the grand central Overland Route to Colorado and Utah and the Pacific Territories. Our road lay through the northern counties oi Kansas and the southern of Nebraska; across the valleys of the Big and Little Sandy and the Big and Little Blue rivers; and here we strike the Platte River, up which and its southern branch we continue till we reach Denver. We came through the region of the Indian surprises and attacks of last week, but met no hostile red-skin. We found abundant evidences, however, of their last year's swoop through the line, in ruins of houses and barns which they then burned, and stories of their terrible massacres. General Connor and his aid, Captain Jewett, are riding out with us on their way to Julesburg, the General's head-quarters, two hundred miles farther west; and through the exposed parts of the line we had, as all the stages now have, "GALVANIZED YANKEES." II a guard of two to four cavalrymen. A few soldiers, with a half-dozen cool and well-armed passengers, are always enough to frighten off or drive away any number of Indians less than a hundred. The red-skin fights shy, and only attacks where he is sure of little or no resistance; and he is despised, as a foe, by all the military men and old stagers along the Plains. But the necessity of keeping up steady mail and travel communication through this region, and of protecting the immense traffic in provisions, goods and machinery now in progress between the East and far West, enforces upon the government the duty of placing a strong military force al...« less