MAN. It has taken millions of years, nobody can guess within a million years how long it has taken, to work out the grand scheme of creation as it now exists, before the eyes of living men. After all the animal life whose bony remains are locked up in solid rock or buried thousands of feet deep under deposits of earth and gravel had passed away, the area of Oregon was covered over with an ice cap thousands of feet deep. What change in the Earth, or the heavens, changed ancient Oregon from the balmy climate producing figs and palm trees to that of a frigid region of continental ice can never be known. That the glacial age lasting for thousands, possibly a million years, did exist, is amply proved by the testimony of the rocks on all our mountain peaks. After the ice age then came Man.

Probably the most important discoveries ever announced in the field of American archaeology are contained in the newly published fifth volume of the reports of the Peabody museum, Harvard University.

In this volume Ernest Volk, of Trenton, New Jersey, published the evidence he has discovered showing the existence of man at the time of the glacial epoch in the Delaware valley, state of Delaware. This means that man existed in America at a prehistoric period which has been placed by geologists as far back as 400,000 years. It means that the early American was among the first men on earth, instead of being a comparatively late comer, as the majority of scientists have maintained.

During the last twenty-five years Mr. Volk has explored hundreds of excavations made by himself and others on the banks of the Delaware river, which in prehistoric ages was two or three times its present width. He points out that the characteristic soil formation of this region consists of (1) a layer of black soil on top of which lived the Indians who were here when white men first came; (2) below this the yellow drift deposited by argillite; tools six inches down in the yellow drift, and beneath another 18 inches of black soil.

"It contained," he says, "under a flat slab of argillite, a beautiful slender argillite spear head; also several chipped argillite boulders, argillite chips and a number of quartzite pebbles broken by fracturing. No charcoal, burnt stone or traces of fire were found. The yellow soil was not disturbed below the workshop, nor was there any connection between the workshop and the black soil." Then came the finding of human bones in the yellow dirt drift on Abbot's farm.

"On April 21, 1899," says Volk's report, "two distinct heaps of human bones were found. They were six feet below the present surface, and rested upon a stratum of whitish sand, coarse, clean and sharp, six inches thick."

The implements he found in the yellow drift were all of argillite, a kind of slate, and of two kinds only, one for penetrating, the other for cutting and scraping. They are entirely different from the Indian stone implements, which are made of chert, jasper and many other materials, and show a high degree of workmanship.

ECONOMIC GEOLOGY

Nature's great work in the geological up-building of this region has given to Oregon its different climates and soils, its mines of gold, silver, copper, iron,

Vol. I-10

coal, soda, cement and building materials, its grand forests, its navigable rivers, and last but not least, its incalculable water power-greater than that of all the states east of the Missouri river. The Oregon mountain peaks, with their connected ranges, now conserved by government control, lofty, grand and forbidding, will furnish wealth and comfort beyond estimate or comprehension. They take from the clouds and storms of winter and store up in the incalculable millions of tons of snow and ice, the water, which being released, by summer heat, will not only irrigate and fructify the vast arid plateaus of central Oregon, producing as long as the race of man shall exist, the bread, fruit, and meat on which he must live, but also furnish the electric energy to plow the land, harvest the crops, transport the goods and produce, turn the wheels of thousands of manufacturing establishments, and lastly but not least, heat and light the homes of millions of Oregon's future population. For a hundred years these grand Oregon mountains have been condemned by traveler, historian and economist as frowning forbidding mountain wilds of use only to sportsmen and mountain climbers. But the Creator of the Earth builds wiser than men; and the truth is just dawning upon the minds of men, that in the conservation of their forests of timber, their incalculable capacity to produce electric energy and a health giving climate the Oregon mountain peaks and ranges is Oregon's greatest asset of wealth and health.

CHAPTER VII

1774-1805

THE EVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD OREGON-THE PIONEER AMERICAN PUSHING WEST-GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND OLD VINCENNES WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON CO-OPERATING TO HOLD THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY-WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON PLANT STAKES TO HOLD OLD OREGON.

If the reader cares to go back into history far enough to find out how our people got started west, he will find that the same blood which moved out of and west from the dark forests of Germany, crossed over the North sea from Schleswig to the shores of Britain and over-run the country we now call England, and then crossed over the North Atlantic during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the poverty-stricken soil of the east coast of America, there began over again the same development, more or less warlike, to capture the Continent of North America, as their ancestors had utilized in the conquest of the British island. Do not imagine for a moment that this is a far-fetched suggestion, having no connection with the Oregon of the twentieth century. The blood and brains which planted civilization in England, just as surely planted the same forces in the wilds of America and then pushed on westward to the Alleghanies, to the Ohio, to the Mississippi, to the Rocky mountains, and finally to Oregon. And as the new life and surroundings of old England developed out of the Teutonic blood which came to its shores as robbers— new laws, customs and a higher civilization, so likewise did the new world of America develop out of these descendants from ancient Germany, still newer laws, higher ideals, and a more perfect civilization which over-run the wilderness west and conferred upon Oregon, the perfect flower and fruit of all the trials, struggles, sacrifices and labors of the race from its cradle in the Black Forest of Germany to its favored home by the sundown seas.

And as the Englishman was different from his German ancestors, and as the German pushed across seas westward, and the Englishman pushed across the seas westward, so also the American pushed on, and on, until he reached a west that is merged with the east, and they, each, carried their laws and their civilization, such as it was, with them. It was part of their blood, love and spirit. The Roman historian, Tacitus, who wrote about eighteen hundred years ago, and who was celebrated for his profound insight into the motives of human conduct the main spring of character, described the ancient German ancestors of the English as a nation of farmers, pasturing their cattle on the forest glades around their villages and plowing their village fields. They loved the land and freedom; and freedom was associated with the ownership of land.