The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1884-06-11
The By.GOne West.

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 the time the hardy
newer of wood and drawer of water gave
mis- lifetime willingly that his son might
ride in the vanished cars. Now the
Pullman palace car takes the New York
er to the threshold of the seas, or to the
boundary line between the United States
and the British possessions.
1t has driven out the long han lied
frying pan and the fap-jack 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 slumgullion, 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 a
red monogram horse blanket and false
teeth.
The modern camp is not the camp of
the wilderness. It wears the half-civi-
lized and shabby-genteel garments Of
sawed-off town. You know that if you
ride a day you will be where vou can
get the daily papers and read them under
the electric light. That robs the old
CANYONS Of their solemn isolation, and
peoples each gulch with the odor of
codfsh-balls and civilization. Civiliza-
ton is not to blame for this, and yet it
seems sad.
Civilization could not have done this
all alone. It had to call to its aid the in
fernal fruit can that now desolates the
most obscure trail in the heart of the
mountains. You walk over chaos where
the hydraulic has plowed up the valley
like convulsion, or you tread the yield
ing path across the deserted dump, and
on all sides the rusty, neglected. and
humiliated empty tin can stares at you
with its monotonous dude-like stare.
An old-timer said to me once: "Tve
about decided, Bill, that the west Is a
matter of history. When we cooked our
grub over sage-brush 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 60 to a
big tavern and stick a towel under our
chins, and eat pie with fork, and heat
ND our carkisses with antichrist coal. and
what do we amount to? Nuthin! used
to chase Injuns all dav, and eat raw salt
pork at night bekuz I Idassent build fire
and still 1 felt better than / do now with
a wad of tin can solder in my stummick
and a homesick feeling in my weather.
beaten breast.
"No, we don't have the fun we used to
| We nave ulOIc SWdIICCS Oei0tASN "AA'.
one bloomin' thing and another of that
kind, but we don't get one snort of pure
air and appetite in year. They're
bringin' in their blamed telephones now,
and malaria, and aigue, and old sledge
and fun might as well skio out. There
amt no frontier any more. All we've
got left is the old-fashioned frontier joos
and rhumatiz of 49,"
Behind the red squaw's cayuse plug,
The hand-car rears 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.