Page:Bohemians in Central Kansas.pdf/13

 Though I was back on my farm in Saline county, Nebraska, I soon read the reports of how Kansas was invaded also. Crops, orchards and nurseries were devastated. And I was already located in that desolated country, just ready to move my family there! Now came a severe test of character. Would I turn with the tide of exodus pouring out of the unfortunate state through every road and by-way — going east? Many of my best friends argued to persuade me to stay with them in Nebraska, saying that Kansas was the native home of the grasshoppers. Ján Rosicky, of Crete, Neb., late editor of three Bohemian-American papers in Omaha, my intimate friend, tried hard to dissuade me, but no argument could change my mind from my plan of planting a Bohemian settlement in the very center of Kansas. Mr. V. Shantin, having also sold his farm near Crete, and being a good friend of ours, decided to go with us to see, and if pleased, to settle in our new colony in central Kansas. So we got our prairie schooner ready and sometime in the early part of September we proceeded to move into the new land of promise. Meandering southwest, we entered Kansas at the corner of Washington and Republic counties, going through Republic, Jewell, Mitchell, and Lincoln counties into Wilson township, Ellsworth county. But what a pitiful sight was presented to our astonished view every day. Trees nearly all bare of leaves, grass eaten short everywhere, in some places dead and burned off. But the most discouraging spectacle was the numerous caravans that moved in a contrary direction to ours. And how they looked! My pen is powerless to do justice to the description. I even shrink from giving it such a description as I am able. It is too shocking for tender-hearted persons. It is too pathetic—the human beings we saw and their outfits. I delight in beauty, harmony, thrift; in power for spreading peace, plenty, happiness; comedy rather than tragedy.

Mr. Shantin and family mustered only enough courage to come along till we reached the promised land—that was all! They went back. So my family and I had no company. We started in a strange land, among strangers. But hope kept our courage up, and we went right on building a new home in the then desolate wilderness. But there was a little railroad station in sight, where loomed up a curious-looking tower, all enclosed, with a curious windmill on top, the fans revolving horizontally instead of vertically. That was “Bosland,” now Wilson, on the Kansas Pacific railroad. There lived Mr. Jacob Fowle the postmaster, Albert Jellison and Sol Himes, general merchandise, and Mr. Adam Jellison the lumber man. I bought lumber to build a house, designed for a wheat bin, but to serve as our dwelling till it was needed for the winter wheat which I expected to raise the next year. It was small but cost big money. I lined it all with matched flooring that cost $60 per thousand; shingles, $6 per thousand.

That fall through county commissioners the Kansas Pacific Railroad Company furnished those settlers who remained on their farms seed wheat and rye on time, to be paid for a year after. So I got some seed wheat and rye to put out on my sod. The first sowing of winter wheat and rye was done under great difficulty. The difficulty consisted in the ground, it being so dry that a proper seed bed could not be prepared. That was before the invention of the disk-harrow. I tried to stir the dry sod with the breaking-plow, but found it impossible, for it had baked hard instead of rotting. I could only turn over the two inches of sod that had been cut and turned