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Look down to the river flats. The Kansas River comes in here like a baby snake following its mother, the great looped python of the Missouri. From what looks like an island of sand in the broad mid-current but isn’t an island at all—rather an isthmus of sand accumulated in centuries by the two rivers, rise birds—the most beautiful birds in the world—sky-blue, blue wings of immense expanse, with the beautiful streamer lines of a gigantic aerial fish cleaving the air in whirls and spins, or poise like great hawks, with a roar of propellers that sets the atmosphere vibrating.

From “The Life of Frémont.” From collection Dr. G. C. Hebard, Wyoming Univ.

FRÉMONT ADDRESSING THE INDIANS AT FORT LARAMIE

From Dr. G. C. Hebard’s Collection

FORT LARAMIE

This is one of the great half-way stations across the continent for air flight. Will the air transportation do for Kansas City in the future what the steel rail has done in half a century? Quien sabe: as the Mexicans say. Remembering that “tangle-foot” cowboy’s derision and the crowd’s “boos” at the founder of the Santa Fé railroad, who can play prophet? Later, motor down to the Aviation Field. Now I know a little—very little—about aviation. I visited every great aeroplane factory during the War and once took a flight across one of the most dangerous sections of the Rockies. The improvements in aviation have left me gasping. War aeroplanes were built to kill or be killed—light of wing, too light for safety, light of cockpit, much too light for anything but war, but powerful of engine for speed. Now, the aeroplanes are built more powerful of engine, stronger in cockpit and body, with the wings of enormous spread in which may be carried extra gasoline to be tapped as needed. The take-offs are not the impossible bumpy-humpy land spots, which jarred going up and jolted the car to bits coming down, but long runways of concrete, smooth-surfaced as a billiard table; and experiments are in process whether these cannot be made softer to avoid jars in quick landing by the use of tars and asphalts and heavy fabrics as a binder. It is very much like the improvement of the railroad bed in a century, when granite ties and road beds jolted rail cars to wrecks and the nerves of passengers so that Boston papers pronounced all rails a positive menace to sanity. There are fourteen air lines now centering in Kansas City.