Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/307



Nothing better shows the rapid advance of civilization in this country, than the fact that multitudes of the actors of those eventful years of pioneer life in Oregon and California yet live to see and enjoy the wonderful transformation. In fact, the pioneer, most of all others, can, in its greatest fullness, take in and grasp the luxuries of modern life.

Taking his section in a palace car in luxurious ease, he travels in six days over the same road which he wearily traveled, forty-five and fifty years ago, in from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and ninety days. The fact is not without interest to him that for more than a thousand miles of the way on the great central routes, he can throw a stone from the car window into his old camping grounds.

The old plainsmen were not bad surveyors. They may not have been advanced in trigonom-