wagon-tops, as the Goths came to the Danube and knocked at the doors of Rome.
These home-hunters on the great tide that always has set the adventurers and the homeless of humanity sweep ing into the west, were as alien to that raw country as fruit to the desert. That was a time of great unrest among the landless of the older states, the tenant farmers, small landholders, cramped and hopeless of better things. An infectious courage seemed to have swept the country that spring, which resulted in the breaking of old moorings, the uprooting of old ties, and a general rush to the wide unpeopled rim of western Kansas.
It was an unprecedented tide of emigration, even for that state, where the phenomenal is the rule; it carried farther than agricultural enterprise ever had dreamed of penetrating before. If these brave pioneers ever had heard of the saying that there was not much chance for a man west of Dodge, they were undismayed by it, and unchecked. At any rate, there was no other place left for them to go. East of Dodge the best of it was taken; to the west there was plenty of room for freedom and a home. Men live in Iceland for no other reason than they are free.
Damascus had its dusty beginning at the railroad, where the little dark-red depot stood across the mouth of the principal street. This was called Custer Street, in honor of the commander of the historic Seventh Cavalry, who had been the government's besom on that wild highland plain years before, sweeping the savages away, making ready for the peaceful tide of homeseekers which had been so long in sending its crest to the last Kansas frontier.
