Bellevue gazette. [volume] (Bellevue City, N.T. [i.e. Neb.]) 1856-1858, 1857-08-20
The West.

81 hear the tread Of pioneers,
OF nations yet to be
The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The elements of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm,
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
It's fitting place shall find,
The raw material Of a State,
Its muscle and its mind ."-WHITIER.
This west Of ours is a great country.
Look at its extent. 1t reaches almost
from the tide waters of the Eastern At
lantic to the low water mark of the Yves.
tern Pacific, and from chilly Superior to
torrid Texas.
See how many proud States, each one
a country by itself, it includes, with their
different social systems.
Ohio and Indiana, with their old fash.
toned civilization, the growth of less than
a generation of toll; Wisconsin, Michi-
gan, and the far North West, with their
small free labor farms, displaying the
nearest approach to practical demo-
cratic equality Illinois with its broad
fields and vast farms to be in a few years
the highest example of the application of
capital TO agriculture Missouri and the
South West, with their rich plantations
representing in a new country the feud-
ally of the Old World Utah with its
practical communism and its fanatical So
ciability California with its well nigh
fabulous wealth and its barbaric magnif-
cence and Oregon's chain of settlements
5 binding the forest of the western slope to
, the food of the Western ocean, as with a
brooch of human destiny.
See its grand proportions; its lakes
that would float the navies of the world
its rivers that collect the waters of a con.
%tinent; its mountains tipped with eternal
. snow; and its broad beautiful prairies,
once the gardens of wild verdure and
luxuriant fora, and fast becoming the
model farms of the world.
: But more noble than all this greatness
! of extent and grandeur of beauty, is the
rapidly of the civilization of this glori.
! Gus region. The tide of travel with it.
! spring and autumn flow and ebb, is inun.
dating this West with the commerce, and
the civilization, the riches and the refine
: ment of the Eastern and older regions Of
the earth. Homes are peering out from
the dark richness Of the prairies !; ant
= nesting in the shadows Of the old forest
the fence of the settler intercepts. The
: Indians trail and hearthsiones have sup.
planted council fires.
Railroads are creating channels of traf
hc and directing the current Of sympa,
thies, and the locomotive as il follows tn,
star of Empire on Its westward way
draws a nation in its train.
The past of the West is rich in bolC
n and daring deeds, its present is filled Il
the brim with u~nexampled enterprise
and its future is overHowing with incon
; ceivable a~nticipations. The West is no
yet an atom of what it is TO be. Though
not in the far west, the valley Of the Mis-
sissippi is the geographical center of Nortl
l. America ard the richness of that no
BILE stream is yet 10 run like a goldel
thread through the very center of tn
Union.
When this great Republic is a c~ontinen
wide 10 It's extent, as 1t mus; be, III
west will be its center, and those vigor
IS Gus young States we are building up wi
be the grand centers of the Confederacy
re Every prairie will teen with inhabi
tants-every brook will turn a clatterin
mill-the minerals that lie beneath tn
r. soil will be diligently dug forth-,h
rg country shall be verdent with farms, an
f. the towns crowded with factories.
b. Then here. beneath fairer than Italia
skies, shall be heaped up the wealth, an