The Kansas herald of freedom., 1857-06-13
The West

The first low wazh Of waves, were soon
Shall roll q human sea-
The elements of Empire here
Are plastic yet and warm
Inc chaos OF mighty world
Is rounding into form
Zach rude and jostling fragment soon
1t hitting place shall find,
The raw material of State
Its muscle aud Its mind. WHITTIER
This West of ours is a great country,
Look at It's extent 1t reaches aImos;
from the tide waters of the Eastern At
lantie to the low water mark of the West.
ern Pacific. and from chilly Superior to
tordd Texas.
See how many proud States, each one
a country of itself, it includes; with their
differing social systems
Ohio and Indiana with their old-fash-
toned civilization, the growth of less than
a generation of toll Wisconsin, Michigan
and the far North west with their small
free labor farms. displaying the nearest
approach to practical democratic equality;
! Illinois with its broad fields and vast
farms to be in few years the highest
example of the application of capital to
Agriculture Missouri and the Southwest
with their rich plantations representing in
new country the feudality of the Old
World; Utah with its practical Communism
and its fanatieal sociality; California with
its well nigh fabulous wealth and its bar
barrie magnificence and Oregon's chain of
settlements binding the forest of the
Western slope to the food of the Western
ocean, as with 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 con-
tinent; its mountains tipped with eternal
snow; and its broad, beautiful prairies
once the gardens of wild yerdure and lux
uriant flora, and fast becoming the model
farms of the world.
But more noble than all this greatness
of extent and grandeur of beauty, is the
rapidity of the civilization of this glorious
region. The tide of travel, with its
Spring and Autumn flow and ebb, is inun-
dating this West with the commerce, and
the civilization, the riches and the refine
Inent of the Eastern and older regions of
the earth. Homes are peering out from
! the dark richness of the prairies; and
nesting in the shadows of the old forests,
the fence of the settler intercepts the In
dams trail, AID hearth-Stones have SUP
PLANTED council fires.
Railroads are creating channels of traf-
iic, and directing the current of svmpa-
thies, and the locomotive, as it follows
the star of Empire on its westward way.
draws nation in its train.
The past Of the West is rich in hold
and daring deeds, its present is filled to
the brim with unexampled enterprise, and
its future is OVERLOOKING with inconceivable
antieipatiOns.
The West is not yet an atom of what
it is to be. Though HOW the far West.
the Valley of the Mississippi is the geo.
graphical center of North America; and
the richness of that noble stream is vet
to run like a golden tread through the
very center OF the Union.
When this great Republic is a continent
wide in its extent, as it must be, the
West will be Its center, and these vigor-
Gus young States we are building up will
be the grand centers of the Confederacy.
Every prairie will teen with inhabi-
tants-evcry brook will turn Gathering
mill-the minerals that lie beneath the
soil will be diligently dug forth-the
country shall be verdant with farms, and
( the towns shall he crowded with factories.
/ Then here beneath fairer than Italian
skies, shall be heaped up the wealth, and
enjoyed the refinements of the world
and we do not dream wildly when we
imagine that somewhere in this prolific
valley shall be the mammoth central
Depot of the world, where the commerce
of all nations shall commingle; where, in
flying trips around the globe, shall meet
| travellers, speaking all the languages of
the babhIing earth.
/ Who wouldn't be of the West, western?
I-Haukesha Republican.