3-052-568 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in the American Far West, 1880. '...large numbers of the poor n*groes...have lately sought refuge in Kansas, travelling long distances, in an almost destitute condition, to reach the land which bears a traditional fame of justice and mercy, and of inviolate freedom, secured to their oppressed race. Such a party of homeless wanderers, with their little children seated beside them, one girl reading her school New Testament, one baby playing with a toy-rattle, is represented at the top of the page. In the centre is a scene of the early gold-seeking operations on the "placers," or surface-diggings, of Colorado, where immense mineral riches of different species have been discovered...Beneath this is the encampment of an emigrant farmer's household on their way across the vast level of the prairies, to occupy some remote location where frugal management and steady toil will gain them a rude but sufficient rustic livelihood, and with no rent to pay for the land they have to cultivate. The figures of half-bred or tame Indians in huge Mexican straw hats, of a Chinese washerman in California writing out or ciphering up his bills, and of a n*gro servant-boy returning from a simple errand, belong to a region that lies much farther west'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.