The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-10-11
NO. 168.
WESTWARD EMPIRE.
The Mighty March Of Civilization To-
ward the Setting Sun.

One hundred years ago the pioneers
OF New England and the advance
guard of the great column of Anglo
Saxon migration, that has during the
interval marched to the Pacific, abolish
ing the frontier and conquering the
desert, descended the western slopes
of the Alleghenies into the valley of
Ohio and disappeared in its solitudes.
Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis we're
outposts of civilization, exposed to the
brand and the tomahawk. a few log
huts, trading stations and mission
houses we're scattered along the crumb-
ling banks of the rivers and in the pro-
found depths Of the forests. There
were neither highways nor public con-
veyances; commerce, agriculture nor
manufactures no school, churches
nor society; nothing but nature and
its vicisstudes the savage and his
Iprey.
From that unsurveyed Wilderness,
in less than a century, twenty-one
States have been admitted into the
Union, having an area OF 500, 900, 900
acres, population of more than 55,-
900, 900, and wealth beyond measure
ment or computation. Sparsely in
habited, with rude and unscientihc
methods, its resources hardly touched,
the States of the Mississippi valley last
year produced more than three quarters
of the sugar coal, corn, oats, wheat,
cotton, tobacco, lead, hay, lumber,
wool, pork, beef, horses and mules Ct
the entire country, together with large
fraction of its gold and silver Their
internal commerce is already greater
than all the foreign commerce Of the
combined nations of the earth.
China supports 400, 900, 900 psople
upon an area smaller and less fertile.
The civilization Of Egypt, whose monu-
ments have for forty centuries excited
the awe and admiration of mankind,
was nourished by the cultivation of less
than 10000 square miles, in the mar
row valley and delta of the Nile. The
delta Of the Rhine, and the adjacent
lands reclaimed from the Zuyder Zee,
less than $1,000 square miles, has long
sustained the United Kingdom Of the
Netherlands and given to a dense pop
ulatlon wealth, comfort and content
lment.
| The delta Of the Mississippi, below
its junction with the Ohio, richer than
the Nile or the Rhine, exceeds the
combned area of Holland and Egypt,
and is destined under the stimulus of
} free labor and the incentives of self
, government to build fabric of society
more opulent and enduring. Add to
this the inexhaustible alluvion of the
streams above, and the fertile prairies
from which they descend, and the
arithmetic of the past has no logarithms
with which to compute the problems
of the economic and commercial
future Of the West. 1t will be pre-
dominant in the development, not of
this country alone, but Of the hems-
phere, and will give direction 10 the
destlnits of the human race.
| We stand in the vestbule. We have
not yet entered the temple. When
the first furrlw was broken on the
prairies of Illinois there was not an iron
plowshare in the world Men are yet
living who might have seen the first
steamboat on Western waters on her
trial trip from Pittsburgh in 1871, and
who were in active life when the first
passenger r, de in railway train and
the first telegraphic dispatch was sent
The early settlers of Missouri had to
depend on flint and tinder for fire.
Most of the inventions in machinery,
nearly all the appliances for comfort
and convenience, were unknown 10 the
pioneers of the West. There victories
were won with few OF the methods and
J, devices now regarded as indispensable
in even the humbest walks Of life
When its agricultural, mining anc
manufacturing resources are fully de
veloped by steam and electricity, tn,
Mississippi valley will support and en-
rich, without crowding, 500, ,oo'
people, and be not only the granary
but the workshop, of the planet.
Alre dy by the readjustments OF tn
eleventh census the center and seat O
: political power has been transferred
hlther from the seaboard The Centra
West, with its natural and inevitable
allies, the States OF the Gulf and tn
T, Southeast Atlantic have a majority {
the members of both houses Of Cor
gress, and of the College Of electors f
President and Vice President of th
- United States. They control the e,
n ecutive and legislative departments
the Government They hold the purs
and sword of the Nation, and will her,
nd after dictate its policy of administration
Sectional causes have delayed this COZ
lltion, but the arrangement is disaI
~ pearing, and reconciliation will soon t
complete, Senator ingalls,.
- The destruction Of human life
wild animals and snakes in India vari,