Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1884-06-14
no MORE FRONTIER.
Bht Nye on the Way the West is I1ssins
It's Strange Ways.

ont A'Se VH tue wa the W e9t II I<0ol04
us Strange Ways.
The system OF building railroads into
the wilderness and then allowing the
wilderness to develop afterward, has
'knocked the essential JOY out Of the life
OF the pioneer. At one time the hardy
newer OF wood and drawer of water gave
his fie willingly that his son might ride
IN the vanished cars" Now the Pull
mar palace car takes the New Yorker to
the threshold of the sea or to the bound:
ary line between the United States and
the British possessions.
It has driven out the long
hying-pan and the fapjack of twenty
years ago, and introduced the condensed
milk and canned fruit of commerce.
Along the highways, where once the
hopeful hundreds marched with long
handled shovel and pick and pan, cook
ing by the way thin salt pork and flap
jacks and slamgulion, now the road is
lined with empty beer bottles and peach
cans that have outlived their usefulness.
No landscape can be picturesque with
an empty peach can in the foreground,
any more than lion would look grand
in red monogram horse blanket and
false teeth.
The modern camp is not the camp of
the wilderness. It wears the half civil
lied and shabby genteel garments of a
sawed-off town. You know that if you
ride day you will be where you can get
. the daily payers and read them under
the electric light. That robs the old
canyons of their solemn isolation and
peoples each gulch with the odor Of
Goldfish balls and civilization. Civiliza-
ton is not to blame for all this, and ye.
it seems sad.
Civilization could not have done this
all alone. It had to call 20 its aid the in
fernal fruit can that nov desolates the
most obscure trail in the heart of the
mountains. You walk over the chaos
where the Hydraulic has plowed up
the valley like a convulsion, or you tread
the yielding path across the deserted
dump, and on all sides the rusty, neg
lected and Inundated empty tin can
stares at you with it's monotonons, dude
like stare.
An old timer once said to me: "1've
about decided, Bill, that the West is a
matter of history. When we cooked our
grub over sage-b fire we could get
fat and fight Indians, but now We fill
our digesters with the cold pizen and
pewter of the canned peach; we go to a
big tavern and stick towel under our
chins and eat pie with fork and heat
up our carkisses with antichrist coal, and
what do we amount to? Nuthin ]
used to chase Indians all day and eat raw
salt pork at night, bekuz dassent build
fire, and still felt better than dc
now with wad of tin-can solder in my
stummick and a homesick feeling in my
weather-beaten breast
mo, we don't have the fun we used
to. We have more swarrees and sciatica
and one bloomin' thing and another o.
that kind, but we don't get one snort oI
pure air and appetite in year. They're
bringin' in their blamed telephone. nov
and malaria and aigue and old sledge
and fun might as well skip out. There
amt no frontier any more. All we've
got left is the old-fashioned trantler joos
and rhumat1z OF 40"
Behind the red squaw's cayuse plug
The hand-car roars and raves.
And pie-plant pies are now produced
Above the Indian graves.
hear the oaths of pioneer.
The caucus yet TO be,
The first low hum where soon will come
The fuzzy humble bee.
2ILL NYE.