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246 of New England within twenty-five years! A similar process is now in rapid movement among ourselves in the Pacific Northwest. Once we had here a little world of our own. We shall have it no more. The horizon that once was bounded by our own board enlarges to the horizon of man.

The story of the toilsome march of the wagon trains over the plains will be received by future generations almost as a legend on the borderland of myth, rather than of veritable history. It will be accepted, indeed, but scarcely understood. Even now, to those who made the journey, the realities of it seem half fabulous. It no longer seems to have been a rational undertaking. The n4)id transit of the present time appears almost to relegate the story to the land of fable. No longer can we understand the motives that urged our pioneers toward the indefinite horizon that seemed to verge on the unknown. Mystery was in the movement; mystery surrounded it. It was the last effort of that profound impulse which, from a time far preceding the dawn of history, has pushed the race, to which we belong, to discovery and occupation of Western lands.

My earliest recollections go back to conditions in the Upper Mississippi Valley. There, three-score years ago, the people were just beginning to emerge from the conditions of pioneer life. The chief agency that affected this change was improved methods of communication. On these all progress depends. People in isolation adapt themselves to their circumstances. They make themselves content with what they are and with what they have. They become very serious, they are tied to a deep religiosity, yet become extremely narrow and provin-