Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/315

298 298 UNSURPASSED BROWN COUNTY. they had a fiae stretch of valley to traverse for abouli eight mile£i until they reached Doniphan county. But before leaving Brown, may not a word be said about that county? John Brown's body will march on forever, and his name will be perpetuated by the best county in Kansas; but it is a shame to dispel the happy illusion that this county is named after the man "whose body Ues mouldering in the grave," for it is not. By rights the county should have an e at the end, after A. G. Browne. Untill857, the Iowa Indians owned a strip of land two by ten miles in the northeast corner of the county, but the whites were not content until they had the Govern- ment put same up for sale. This county is a body of land twenty-four by twenty-four miles square, and there is no real estate boomer interested; but now, as many times before, the bold assertion is made that it is the finest all-round 576 square miles of agricul- tural land in the world; and further than that, its farm houses, barns, granaries, grades of horses, hogs and cattle will hold its own with any people; but more important than anything else, its farmers and their wives are the most up-to-date people, and few if any can surpass. This may be considered strong, but it is well weighed, having been so asserted viva voce many times. Now fancy yourself at about Severance, on Woll river in Doniphan county, where this stream ia left, but it is only a few miles across the prairie to Inde- pendence creek, and now down the creek at the mouth of which the "Great City of the Tw«iity-four" is sit- uatea.