WCP445

[1]

Salina, Kansas

May 13th '87

My dear Mitten

I am staying here a few days with a friend I met ^{(& made)} in Washington, and being ⁱⁿ about the centre of the United States and in the midst of the great prairie region west of the Mississippi I will give you a brief account of it. After crossing the Alleghenies— a mountain region like Wales on a larger scale with the mountains wooded to their summits— I reach Cincinnati on the Ohio, and there met for the fist time a country of green fields something like home. It is still however our originally forest— country, and was so ^{more or less} all the way to the Mississippi at St. Louis. Going up the Missouri Valley to Sioux City, Iowa. the alluvial valley varying from a few yards to many miles wide had only patches of wood here & there, of very fertile black soil. At Sioux City Iowa the interior country, a succession of low hills and valleys, as their general outlines very like the downs between Clayton and Lewes, [one word crossed out illegible] but extending indefinitely, and all grassy except in the valleys which are more or less wooded. These plateaus and valleys are formed as a sandy-limestone covered [2] from 20 to 150 feet deep with the loess deposit a fine almost impalpable sand or loam very like the fine deposit under the gravel at Grays. Here in Kansas the country is very similar, but there is more of their loess, and the general surface has rather less steep undulations except here and there where bluffs are formed by a hard bed of rock at the summit of the hills. thus. [sketch of hills drawn below this sentence]

The curious thing is that over most of the upland surface there is a deep rich black soil, except on the few abrupt summits where the rock covers to the surface. Here & for hundreds of miles East to the Missouri River there is no wood except close along the streams, but water is everywhere [one word illegible] with a few feet (20 to 40) below the surface, & is pumped up by windmills for the use of the cattle. An immense area of this country is under cultivations and railroads so intersect it that four parts are more than 10 or 15 miles away from me. Wherever the ground has been cultivated the vegetation is very monotonous and weedy, but as the untouched hill sides especially where stony & rocky there is an abundant and varied flora of very fine plants. One of the most [3] common is a Baptisia said to be B. australis (which I have in the garden) but I think distinct, being dwarf with a magnificent ^erect raceme of large deep blue flowers, one I gathered today being 18 in. high. I also found the Malvastrum coccineum, the curious dwarf brick red flower I have on the bulb-bed, and is one place the ground was gay with the blue and pink flowers of Tradescantia virginiana away which were many plants of Yucca angustifolia. Numerous Asters, Echinaceas, Salvias, Astragalus, Oxytropis, Delphinium, Houstonia, Ruellia, and scores of curious composites are coming up & will form a succession of flowers during the summer. Penstemon cobaea is also abundant here with its fine large lilac flowers. My friend here (who founded this town now about 10,000 pop. 30 years ago) remembers the whole country swarming with buffalo, now absolutely extinct in the whole country between Missouri & the Rocky Mountains. I have now decided to go to California next week, & shall I think be able to stay at least a week in the Sierra Nevada and as much or more in the Rocky Mountains, and expect to find no end of fine of plants. I am most anxious to be able to send some of them home safely. Please let me know if you receive the small box I sent you from Washington (April 5th) and [4] what state the plants were in. Also if those you had before from Annie have lived. I have written to Miss Jekyll asking her experience as to the 3-4 boxes I have sent her. If you write to me at once to care of John Wallace Esq., Stockton, California I shall get it before my return journey. I enclose you some [one word crossed out illegible] ^seeds of a rose from Iowa said to be a [one word illegible] red prairie rose— a little bush. Also a few seeds of a handsome perennial Lupine from the Rocky M[oun]t[ai]^ns given me by a botanical friend. No doubt I shall be able to get some seeds in the summer, but now all the plants are in early growth. I hear the display of flowers in some parts of the Rockies & of the Sierra Nevada is grand; I only wish I had you with me to enjoy it. Should you like to come, it will cost only about £16 from N[ew] York to Denver and back ^{(the "round-trip" as they say here)} and you can get a 2nd class passage to New York & return for about £14 I expect, = £30;— allow £20 for living and expenses a month in the Rockies and you will have an excursion the most sublime at a moderate cost! If so arrange to meet me at Denver about 25th June. Leaving Liverpool 14 or 15 days earlier. You can get all particulars at some of the London Offices. This just came with my head. Is it an inspiration? If you want a cheaper trip come to Montreal where I shall be early in July and we will go to the Adirondacks but this will ne poor compared with the Rockies.

Yours Affectionately | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]