Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/76



If the reader cares to go back into history far enough to find out how our people got started west, he will find that the same blood which moved out of and west from the dark forests of Germany, crossed over the North sea from Schleswig to the shores of Britain and over-run the country we now call England, and then crossed over the North Atlantic during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the poverty stricken soil of the east coast of America, and there began over again the same development, more or less warlike, to capture the Continent of North America as their ancestors had utilized in the conquest of the British island. Do not imagine for a moment that this is a far-fetched suggestion, having no connection with the Oregon of the twentieth century. The blood and brains which planted civilization in England, just as surely planted the same forces in the wilds of America, and then pushed on westward to the Alleghanies, to the Ohio, to the Mississippi, to the Rocky mountains, and finally to Oregon. And as the new life and surroundings of old England developed out of the Teutonic blood which came to its shores as robbers—new laws, customs and a higher civilization, so likewise did the new world of America develop out of these descendants from ancient Germany, still newer laws, higher ideals and a more perfect civilization which over-run the wilderness west and conferred upon Oregon, the perfect flower and fruit of all the trials, struggles, sacrifices and labors of the race from its cradle in the Black Forest of Germany to its favored home by the sundown seas.

And as the Englishman was different from his German ancestor, so likewise was the American different from his English ancestor. And as the German pushed across seas westward, and the Englishman pushed across seas westward, so also the American pushed on, and on, until he reached a west that is merged in the east. These peoples carried their laws and their civilization, such as it was, with them. It was part of their blood, love and spirit. The Roman historian, Tacitus, who wrote about eighteen hundred years ago, and who was celebrated for his profound insight into the motives of human conduct and the dark recesses of character, describes the ancient German ancestors of the English, as a nation of farmers, pasturing their cattle on the forest glades around their villages and plowing their village fields. They loved the land and freedom; and freedom was associated with the ownership of land.