Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/100

82 to that of a very different pathfinder, James J. Hill—the builder of the last of the great pioneer roads—this view largely prevailed.

Mr. Hill was an Anglo-Saxon, not a Frenchman. He too was lured by distant horizons, but he was willing to proceed toward them slowly, sending deep roots into the soil as he advanced. Where crops had thriven under the rude culture of the Indian women, crops on a far greater scale would-flourish under the advanced methods of cultivation; where buffalo, antelope and deer, elk and mountain sheep had found ample sustenance, the livestock of the pioneer would live and multiply. Mr. Hill proposed to blaze a new overland trail to the Pacific, but it was to advance scarcely more rapidly than settlements which could support it.

It must be remembered that there was only left for him the most northely route, the one least likely, in the unseeing eyes of his time, to support such an enterprise as he contemplated. Time has demonstrated the accuracy of his judgment. The Great Northern railway, built without government aid, both created and has been supported by, the agricultural and stock raising communities of a country carelessly condemned as worthless. A vast and prosperous population has followed the shadowy footsteps of those early Frenchmen and the faith and practical sagacity of a great American.