Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/76



where now, there is little else than a wild wilderness, there shall be all the life—all the populous throng and bustle—all the stately magnificence—all the interests—all the enterprise—all the intelligence—of the most active, proud, and populous nations of the Old World. Imagination, peering into the far future, beholds enthroned upon an hundred heights, the lordly mansions of the opulent, surrounded with gardens, teeming with fruits and flowers; with parks, and pools, and groves of ornamental trees; and far up the sides of the surrounding mountains, the herdsmen's and the shepherd's humble cottages repose, in sweet and solitary quiet, deep buried amid the mountain pines. And still, yielding to a more romantic mood, the imagination, excited by every thing about it, and by its own wild pictures, cannot but come, in its dreamy wanderings, to the time when these mountains—these rivers—these verdant vales, – when every rock, and hill, and cataract; when every forest, glade, and glen; when every mountain gorge, and precipice, and dark ravine, shall have been sung and storied, until they have grown old and honored by the Poet's pen, and the thrilling legends of the past. But, looking beyond the snow capped barrier, which bounds the vision, to the East, the mind labors in vain to read, from the character of such dreary regions, what will be the future destiny of those wilds and wastes. Long may the lover of romantic scenes and adventures, find in them an ample scope for all his inclinations. Long may the Poet and writer of fiction, undetected, rear there, the fabricks of their dreams, and people the green mountain-girt Oasis of those unexplored solitudes, with the gallant, lovely, and happy creatures of their imaginations. About these, hang mysteries, which time and the baseless stories of the fanciful, will probably render only more mysterious. In these, may rest at last, the remnant of the ancient owners of this great Continent; and here, in a semi- civilized condition, they may continue, the wonder and the terror of ages yet to be. In such a land as this, it is easy to suppose that the minds of its future inhabitants, partaking of the characters of the things around them, will rise in splendor, like their own cloud-piercing peaks; or flow, in majesty, like their broad, majestic Rivers. And while beholding here, a prospect, which he feels that nature herself, in her farthest reachings, in her most sublime imaginings, could not improve; to which, though she would scatter with unsparing hand, upon one favored spot, all beauty and all grandeur, she could not add one single touch; while taking, at one vast sweep, such an assemblage of grand