Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/284

 tion of the sea has always been a main factor in the promotiou and growth of civilization.

The early settlement of the Middle West was based wholly on nature. Garments were homespun. There were no naik or glass, and the fewest books. In the earliest settlement of Oregon, down to 1850, it was the same. But the discovery of gold in California started an active movement to our Pacific Coast, not only by land but by sea. We could get the world's commodities here which could not be had, then, or scarcely at all, in the interior of Illinois or Missouri. Before we began to grow wheat in Oregon sufficient to supply our bread, we got flour from Chile; beans from Chile, and sugar from Manila. From Oregon, even in that early day, we could get a view, through commerce, of the wide world. In the first and last analysis all progress of mankind depends upon the sea, for the sea is the medium of universal communication. And, probably, all life on our planet began in the sea.

Native life in this country at the time when the pioneers came was adjusted strictly to the environment. The Indian probably had reached his limit of progress. Without assistance from outside sources, man in America could have got on no further. He had not the means of additional attainment. It was necessary to have help from a world beyond him. Nature had done little for the Western Hemisphere, except in giving fertility to the soil. Here were no animals that could be domesticated and made to do the work which man required. Think what this means. It means that the basis of agricultural life, which is the beginning of all civilization, was denied to primitive man in America. The horse, the ox and cow, the sheep and pig, brought from Europe, were to constitute the basis of pioneer life, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the domestic animals we depended absolutely, in the settlement of the Oregon country. We could do nothing without them.

Life here corresponded with the primitive conditions estab-