The little town of Coffeyville in the southern part of Kansas, at the birth of which I chanced to be present, when it sprang up as if by magic from the surrounding prairie, may be taken as a fair example of the _modus operandi_ of ‘locating’ a new ‘city’ on the western frontier. This place is somewhat unlike the general run of mushroom cities, because, without any peculiar advantages of situation, it has survived, almost in spite of itself, up to the present day, in consequence of its being for a long time the terminus of the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad, before legislation permitted that line to pass through the Indian territory. Though unlike in this respect, its birth and early life were similar in every particular. In all, the same extravagant excitement and speculation in corner lots temporarily prevail; the same scenes of lawlessness and bloodshed are enacted, and the usual number of lives sacrificed by knife or bullet in drunken brawls and gambling disputes. Usually the career of these temporary cities is nipped in the bud as soon as the railway has advanced far enough to require a fresh depot. Then if the present site does not possess sufficient qualifications for the town’s growth to induce any one to remain, the wooden buildings are taken down, packed on the construction train, and transported to the next resting-place, for a repetition of the old scenes of feverish excitement and dissipation. After their removal, nothing remains to mark the late scene of busy life and revelry except two or three worthless old shanties, broken bottles and rubbish of every description, and torn and discoloured playing-cards and scraps of paper, which are whisked up and whirled far and wide in the eddies of the prairie breezes. But I was nearly forgetting to mention the most important souvenirs invariably left behind by these advancing heralds of civilisation. These are the mounds which mark the final resting-places of those who ‘died with their boots on’ (as expressed on the frontier); who met men quicker than themselves at their own weapons—the revolver and the bowie-knife—and who were carelessly thrown into their lonely graves, there to remain as silent witnesses of lawless savagery.