Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/348

Rh comprise nine square miles running for over five miles along the banks of the Missouri.

Early next morning our party is again on their journey, for it is yet twenty-five miles to the mouth of the Kansas river, and it is desired to reach that point early in the afternoon. So merrily speed the canoes, and cheerfully travel the stock and their keepers, as the animals have fine pasture and enough new corn to make them "feel their oats," as horsemen say, and the men have reached the apex of the hill and are over the other side going down the Cordilleras toward the country from whence they came, and they like the animals have been receiving a good measure of provender, so they feel like kicking up their heels. But the greatest stimulus is that little word "home," and now our boats are speeding through the "filum" (middle of the stream), where the county of Wyandotte is now carved out. (By the by, this county is the smallest of the 105 in Kansas, yet Kansas City is the largest in the Sunflower State, so no doubt, this is "paradoxicalness," or going by the contrary.)

The mouth of that stream (Kansas), which drains over half of the 82,080 square miles contained in the borders of "Bleeding Kansas," is now reached, the boats are unloaded and all is activity, for Coronado is determined to make for home with all the speed possible. So the Osage warriors and guides are consulted and arrangements made to continue the journey early next morning for the Osage village, which was at the date of our story located near the forks of the Osage river in the southeast corner of Bates county, Missouri.