increase. Patience, coolness, and determination will be sure to bring
us the triumph in the end. These raw recruits, that are at present
worthless before trained soldiers, distrusting themselves as we
distrust them, will yet become veterans, worthy to rank with the best
soldiers of the Old World."

The civilian passengers on a railway in Missouri are essentially
different from the same class in the East. There are very few women,
and the most of these are not as carefully dressed as their Oriental
sisters. Their features lack the fineness that one observes in New
York and New England. The "hog and hominy," the general diet of the
Southwest, is plainly perceptible in the physique of the women. The
male travelers, who are not indigenous to the soil, are more roughly
clothed and more careless in manner than the same order of passengers
between New York and Boston. Of those who enter and leave at
way-stations, the men are clad in that yellow, homespun material known
as "butternut." The casual observer inclines to the opinion that
there are no good bathing-places where these men reside. They are
inquisitive, ignorant, unkempt, but generally civil. The women are
the reverse of attractive, and are usually uncivil and ignorant.
The majority are addicted to smoking, and generally make use of a
cob-pipe. Unless objection is made by some passenger, the conductors
ordinarily allow the women to indulge in this pastime.

The region traversed by the railway is sparsely settled, the ground
being generally unfavorable to agriculture. For some time after
this portion of the road was opened, the natives refused to give it
patronage, many of them declaring that the old mode of travel, by
horseback, was the best of all. During the first week after opening
the Southwest Branch, the company ran a daily freight train each way.