In the autumn of 1871, Rose Georgina Kingsley traveled from England to America chronicling her experiences in the book South by West, or Winter in the Rocky Mountains and Spring in Mexico, published in 1874.

After a whirlwind tour of New England and parts of Ontario, Canada, she and her escort, “Mr. B.” were “fairly launched” on their way to the “unknown West,” on her way to meet her brother at Denver.

After days of travel by train, interrupted by a necessary ferry over the Mississippi River, she awoke to, by all appearances, the perfect specimen of a “mushroom town.”

The collection of shanty buildings and frontier storefronts near the depot was her first impression of Kansas City. To her dismay, an unexpected delay forced a stay in the border city on an unusually hot day.

“My heart sank; for of all places to wait at, a more unpleasant one on a hot day than Kansas City ... can hardly be found.”

She and Mr. B. breakfasted at the Lindell Hotel “in a very hot room.”

A tour of the town revealed two or three “partly finished,” good streets serving several hotels. Scattered stores alongside several wooden saloons with glass fronts lined the streets. On the corners of future streets of mostly mud and stone, a store or two selling candy and fruit could be found.

Higher up the bluff overlooking the Missouri River were churches, schools, and many good residences but the heat of the day drove her back to her room, leaving the more developed part of Kansas City undiscovered.

After dinner tickets to Denver were purchased at the Kansas Pacific depot. Returning to the hotel and an uncomfortable afternoon of waiting. The omnibus finally arrived at 10:30 in the evening to take her and Mr. B. to the train.

Daybreak, Oct. 29, disclosed that the train was “on the prairies in good earnest.”

One hundred eightyfive miles west of Kansas City the train stopped for breakfast at Salina, Kan. Having no dining car, stops were scheduled to allow passengers to take their meals.

A return to the train following breakfast led to an introduction to one of the prairie’s most unique inhabitants. Prairie dogs “sat by the scores on their hind legs praying at the train and rubbing their noses with their forepaws.”

With a full head of steam the train carried its passengers through a morning of swift travel. The prairie seemed to “roll away wave after wave, like some great ocean turned into land in the midst of a heavy ground swell after a storm.”

Just beyond Brookville large herds of cattle and horses grazed among smooth grass-covered slopes rising from the prairie to end abruptly on steep rocky faces. Occasional lonely ranches were seen, and passengers anxiously awaited the coming of the buffalo plains, some going out on the platform to watch for the shaggy beasts.

“A most cruel and foolish fashion prevails on these trains, of shooting the poor animals from the cars ... for the mere pleasure of killing. Endless skeletons lay on each side of the track.”

Not a buffalo could be seen until well after reaching Fort Harker (present-day Kanopolis, Kan.). Suddenly, the crack of a pistol was heard from the front of the train. Three buffalo galloped with their heads down parallel to the train. They continued galloping in their clumsy way after the train had passed, apparently unharmed.

At Ellis, Miss Kingsley and her escort were offered “a nasty meal of tough and almost uncooked buffalo-steak.” They decided to rely upon their own provisions for dinner, before returning to the train.

Once again the cars raced through blinding sun and dust over the “endless plains.” Beautiful lakes and rivers with trees on their banks could be seen on the southern horizon, and to the west a lake was seen. But as the train approached, the lake gradually faded away. It was a mirage, a curious feature of the boundless western prairie.

The utter desolation and monotony was interrupted by pronghorn antelopes bounding away from the train. There were occasional stations made of sod or dugouts in side hills and soon thousands of buffalo grazed within sight of the track. They were so numerous that they were never out of sight the rest of the day.

At the Fort Wallace depot, “the sun set in crimson glory.” The station was full of officers who had driven from the post to get the mail and eastern newspapers brought in by the train. Miss Kingsley had heard the stories of Indian warfare at Fort Wallace, bringing a heightened imagination that they could be attacked at any minute, “but we met with no worse a misfortune than a very bad supper.”

Denver was finally reached at six o’clock the next morning of Oct. 30, 1871. Her brother met her on the platform and treated her to a memorable breakfast of “delicious mountain trout, eggs, and good coffee,” a far cry from the less than tempting meals she had endured while traveling across Kansas on The Way West.

The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.