In 1800 the Rocky Mountains were unknown. The mighty streams of Missouri and Oregon rolled through their primeval solitudes unseen but by the eye of the red man. Now the clank of the steamboat's piston is heard upon almost every stream, and thousands crowd the banks to welcome the thousands that pour from her crowded decks. Tens of thousands now tread the solitudes of the Rocky Mountains and the vast western plains on their way to the Pacific, 2000 miles, with less fear and fatigue than did the little band of pilgrims which, two centuries ago, went from infant Boston to found the colonies of Connecticut, 200 miles west. The next quarter of a century will see the dwellers by the Atlantic making railroad excursions to the shores of the Pacific. The American child of to-day opens his eyes upon a theatre for his enterprize as broad as was the Roman empire in its palmiest days.
Our eastern borders behold the sun in all its splendor rising from the Atlantic, while the western shores are embraced in darkness by the billows of the Pacific. Our country has indeed a vast extent of territory, with the diversified climates of the globe. On the one hand, is the ever smiling verdure of the beautiful and balmy south, and on the other, the sterile hills and sombre pine forests of the dreary north; and intermediate, the outstretched region where the chilling blasts of winter are succeeded by the zephyrs and the flowers of summer.
The snow-clad summits of her mountains look down upon the elemental war of the storm clouds floating above the shrubless prairie, that realizes the obsolete notion of the earth being an immense plain; and, toward the ocean on the east and the west, upon the broad rich valleys where the father of waters, the "endless river," and the majestic Columbia, with its hundred branches, gently winds along, or rapidly rush on to mingle their waters with the waves of the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico, or the magnificent expanse of our northwestern Caspian seas.
Could the power of vision at once extend over our whole wide domain, what a grand, ennobling scene would be presented to a spectator standing upon one of the lofty peaks of the Rocky Mountains, or, as Washington Irving aptly denominates it, "the crest of the world." And then to take, upon a summer day, a bird's-eye view of all our roads, canals, railroads, lakes and rivers-the innumerable post-coaches whirling along over our post-roads; ships or steamers gliding magically along our