CHAPTER XXXIII.

MISSOURI GEOGRAPHY.

The Center State-Original Boundaries-What Was Embraced Within Them-The Treasure Chest of the Continent-Prophecy of Newton Dwight Hillis-"A Slave Peninsula in a Free Soil Sea"-The Price of the Platte Purchase-An Interpreter, a Blacksmith, a Grindstone, and $2,500-That Jog Into Arkansas-The Northern Line ControversyLaying Out the Counties-Early Provision for Public Education-Admiration for War Heroes-Political Convictions-State of Pike-The Rush to Platte-Many Changes in Names-How Callaway Got a Court House-County Seat Wars-When Liberty Was Farthest West-Some Lost Cities-Old Chariton Rivaled St. Louis-Disappearance of St. Andrews-Town Site Speculation in the Early Decades-William Muldrow, Missouri's Foremost Optimist—Marion City the Original of Dickens' Eden-The Ambition of the Osage Promoters-Springfield's Start-"Kickapoo, the Beautiful"-Neosho's Encircling Springs-The Early Colonies-Some Notable First Settlers-Community Experiments-"The Fanatical Pilgrims"-Liberal's Motive-The Mennonites-Harmony Mission-Town, River and Prairie Nomenclature-The Indians' Hidden Fountains of Health.

I came from the center of the earth.-Bishop Thomas Bowman, of Missouri.

To a Boston audience in 1913, Rev. Dr. Newton Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, said: "God built this country like a ship, with the Mississippi for the keel, and the rivers, like the Ohio and the Missouri and their various branches, stretching forth on either side like ribs from the keel; but the center of the ship always is the captain's treasure chest and in that central spot are assembled all the riches of the cargo. Long ago Mr. Gladstone prophesied that the Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds of the twentieth century would be in the Mississippi Valley. He held that cities of a million population would spring up in that region, where the food products are abundant and where the freight upon raw cotton would be little and the freight upon manufactured goods less. Already that prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled. Many a shrewd Englishman manufacturer will move his spindles and looms to the banks of the Mississippi and take advantage of the food materials and the raw cotton and flax and wool, with the iron and the coal and the water power that lend such unique and such stragetic advantage to the Mississippi Valley region. The region where the Ohio, the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys meet is to be the most densely populated region on the face of the earth, not less than the richest and the most prosperous region. New York, indeed, will always be the London, but it will be supported by the manufacturing districts. We now seem to be within sight of the era when the center of economic gravity is to change."

"From the first," said Champ Clark, "Missouri has been the stormy petrel of American politics, the richest, the most imperial commonwealth in the Union.

her geographical position always placed her in the thick of the fight. She was a slave peninsula jutting out into a free-soil sea."

"The first serious trouble on the slavery question came with her admission into the Union, and the second over the admission of California,-a Missouri colony. Most people date hostilities from Sumter, April, 1861. As a matter of fact, Missouri and Kansas had been carrying on a Civil war on their own hook for five or six years before the first gun was fired in Charleston harbor." "If Sir Walter Scott had lived in that day, he could have found material for fifty novels descriptive of border warfare in the forays and exploits of the Missourians and Kansans before the first soldier was legally mustered into the service of either army."

Governor Joseph W. Folk once said: "If a wall were built around Missouri the State could still supply every want of those within. There are fewer mortgaged homes in Missouri than in any other manufacturing State, fewer mortgaged farms than in any other agricultural State, and fewer mortgaged men than in any of the United States. One-tenth of the wheat and one-twelfth of the corn of the entire world are grown in Missouri. In horticulture as well as in agriculture, Missouri leads the other States. The largest orchards on the globe can be found in Missouri. We have no silver mines of consequence, but the output of the Missouri hen each year exceeds in value the total production of all the silver mines of Colorado. We have no gold mines, but the minerals the miners bring up from the bowels of the earth into the Missouri sunlight each year exceed in value the total mineral production of the golden State of California."

The Original Boundaries.

The boundaries of Missouri were defined by Congress in such manner as to provoke in one section a long and irritating controversy:

"Beginning in the middle of the Mississippi River, on the parallel of thirtysix degrees of north latitude; thence west along that parallel of latitude to the St. Francis River; thence up and following the course of that river, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the parallel of latitude of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes; thence west along the same to a point where said parallel is intersected by a meridian line passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas River where the same empties into the Missouri River; thence from the point aforesaid, north along the said meridian line to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passed through the rapids of the river Des Moines, making the same line to correspond with the Indian boundary line; thence east, from the point of intersection last aforesaid, along the said parallel of latitude, to the middle of the channel of the main fork of the said. river Des Moines; to the mouth of the same where it enters into the Mississippi River; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence down and following the course of said river, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the place of beginning."

The boundaries were plain enough until the northwest corner was reached. What did Congress mean by "the rapids of the River Des Moines?" Where was "the Indian boundary line" to which this western section of the northern boundary of Missouri must correspond?