The Kansas herald of freedom. [volume] (Wakarusa, Kan. Territory) 1854-1860, 1858-06-05
The West

Are plastic yet and warm,
The chaos of a nights world
Is rounding into form
Zach rude and jostling fragment sooa
Its hitting place shall find.
The raw materials of a State
It's muscle and It's mind. d.''-WHITTIER.
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 West
ern Pacific, and from chilly Superior to
torrid Texas.
See how many proud States, each one a
country of itself, it includes, with their
different social systems.
Ohio and Indiana, with their old fash
ioned civilization, the growth of less than
generation of toll. Wisconsin, Michi-
gan and the far North West, with their
small free-labor farms displaying a near
approach to practical democratic equal
ity; Illinois with its broad fields and
vast farms to be in few years the high
est example of the application of capi-
tai to agriculture Missouri and the
South West, with their rich plantations
representing in new country the feudal-
ity of the Old World Utah with its
practical communism and its fanatical
sociality California with its we'll nigh
fabulous wealth and its barbaric magnifi-
cence /; and Oregon's chain of settlement
binding the forest of the Western slope
to the flood 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 eter-
nal snow; and its broad, beautiful prai-
ries, once the gardens ofthe wild verdure
and luxuriant fora, and fast becoming the
model farms of the world.
But more noble than all its greatness
of extent aud grandeur of beauty. is the
rapidity of the civilization of this glori-
Gus region. The tide of travel, with its
spring and autumn flow and ebb, is inun-
dating this West with the commerce and
civilization, the riches and refnements of
the Eastern and olderregions 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 Indians trail
and hearth-stones have supplanted coun-
ell fires.
Railroads are creating channels of traf-
fc, and directing the current of sympa-
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 bold and
daring deeds, its present is filled to the
brim with unexamp1ed enterprise, and its
future is OVERLOOKING with inconceivable
anticipations.
The West is not yet an atom of what
it is to be. Though now in the far West
the Valley of the Mississippi IS the geo.
graphical centre of North America /; and
the richness of that noble stream is yet
to run like golden thread through the
very centre of the Union.
When this great Republic is continent
wide in its extent, as it must be-the
West will be its centre and those vigo-
rous young States we are building up viii
be the grand centres of the Confederacy.
Every prairie will TEEN with inhabi-
tants-eyery brook will turn clatterins
mill-the minerals tina. lie beneath the
soil will be diligently dug forth-the coun.
try shall be verdant with farms, and the
towns shall be crowded with factories.
Then here beneath fairer than Italian
skies, shall be heaped up the wealth, and
enjoyed the re6nements of the world
and we do not dream wildly when we i'm
agine that somewhere in this prolific val
ley shall be the mammoth central depot o
the world, where the commerce of all ma
tions shall commingle, where in hyins
trips around the world, shall meet trav.
elers, speaking all the languages of the
babbling earth.
Who wouldn't be of the West, west
ern -Waukesha Republican.
The Ironton, No., Furnace is but little
less eloquent under the same heading
Less than century ago our Unior
comprised thirteen small States on tht
Atlantic seabcard. West of the Missis
sippi, with few exceptions, was a vast.
and bowling wilderness, where nough
was heard save the bowling beast, anC
the warwhoop of the savage.
The great changes that have since tax.
en- place are unprecedented in the annals
of the world. The Allegheny Noun
taihs have long since been passed and th'
Great Valley of the Mississippi is now
being filled up with the tide of emigration
as it pours itself along. Civilization, witt
its halls of worship and temples of learn
ing, has swept away the forest before it
and it will not end its glorious mission un
til it has traversed the Rocky Mountain
and holds full communion with the Pacific
The plains of the West are foodet
with teeming millions, and still there j
| room for more-room enough for the east
ern farmer to come and settle down witt
all his sons around him-for the man O
wealth and enterprise to come and bull.
up large towns-for the poor TO come ant
carve out comfortable home-for tn
stranger, the oppressed and the exile, t
come and fix their domicils amid thos,
civil and religious enioyments which ar
alone to be perpetuated under the form
and auspices of republican government
yes, there is room enough for the thou
sands yet to come.
| i he SeSLlOU VI t&4c COuust1 GCtGCiLA3 VI
the Mississippi is now advancing il
/ wealth, intelligence and refinement wit
an astonishing rapidity. Take for instanc
Southern Missouri. The widest dream
of the poet never pictured vision NOR
pleasing than the reality we see every da
transpiring around US. The iron horse
beating his track farther and farthe
among the steep and wooded mountain.
All along his track large villages ar
spFinging up, resounding with the bus
hum of industry, and growing with "a
pidity that sets old fogyism at defAnc'
Every day some new discovery Is made
beds of marble, fne enough to deck th
palaces of kings, and beds of ore as nc
as the world ever produced. Alread
beds of iron ore have been traced in OF
vicinity sufficient to supply the Who'll
world for centuries to come. Yes, ol
4 Vulcan would have been frantic and thre'
away his forge in wild despair, had Il
gods assigned him the task of workir
Il -