Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/22



LEWIS & CLARK 1805

1502-1805

DISCOVERY OF OREGON

CHAPTER I.

For a long time the Oregon Country was a land of mystery and enchantment as vague as were the Pillars of Hercules to the ancients, and possessed of legends as entrancing as those of Greek mythology. When Bryant wrote Thanatopsis in 1812, he thought of the Barcan desert as one end of the earth and of the Oregon Country as the other. So little was known of this far-west country that he referred to it as

which was as indefinite as a reference to Fairy-land. But as the pillars of Hercules eventually proved to be the great twin rocks guarding the gateway of the Mediterranean, so the "continuous woods," mentioned by Bryant, proved to be a vast region now called the Oregon Country.

The Oregon Country, once described in legend as a land of mystic obscurity, later appeared in history as the