Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1895-02-23

HEADQI All Al NaLLE1 fOlsGE.
ture in whose veins there circulates a
fluid more like rainwater than the strong
and virile blood of healthy manhood.
When Washington was at Valley
Forge. the people for whom he was
fighting the battles that should weld the
colonies into one of the chief nations of
the earth occupied, and but sparsely,
only narrow strip of territory along
the Atlantic coast 1t was but partially
subdued. There were no roads worth
speaking of, nearly all manufactured
products had to be brought from abroad,
the institutions of learning were feeble
and widely scattered, of culture there
was great lack, and the beginnings of
art and literature OH this side of the At
lantic We're yet to be made.
Now-now the United States is one
of the dominant powers of the whole
earth, and if there is serious lack in any
direction of human progress whatever
it is only because not quite time enough
has yet elapsed since the first blow for
American independence was struck. In
all considerings of the growth and evo-
luton of this land and nation it should
be remembered that the nation is not
yet quite l1S years old and that at it's
birth more than nine-tenths of its terri
tory was wilderness absolutely untrod-
den by the white man.
George Washington dream at Val
lev Forge would have been of nation
of 20, 900, 900 souls, or more than 20
times as great as the population then,
for in 1880 there were, according to
the first federal census, but 3,070,O 200
inhabitants here. He would have been
vastly amazed no doubt by the fact that
in less than 1870 years the residents of
the United States were to bear the nu-
merical proportion of to when COM
pared with the population of the Brit
ish isles. He would have marveled at
the wonderful urban growth of the ma
tion he was founding, and the fact that
beside round half dozen of the cities
that wera to be in the United States the
London of that day was small town
would have seemed incredible.
He could not but have been amazed
by the territorial growth of the country
as revealed in his dream, for among 9th.
er things he would have seen that all
France could be put down within the
area of the largest state of the Union of
the future and leave sufficient vacant
space from which to lay out a country
as large as Turkey in Europe Yet the
figures of such dream would have been
more than true, for the area of Texas is
265. 7SO square miles, that of France
2O4, O92 and that of Turkey in Europe
but 1900, so that even after taking
France and Turkey from the Lone Star
States territory strip of land 10 miles
wide and 4S 45 miles long would be
left over.
Possibly that would have been the
most startling of all the features of the
dream to him, for France occupied no
doubt very prominent place in all his
thoughts by reason of its friendly atti-
tude to the new power this side the sea,
but it would have been really of less
import than the fact that the distance
from the as yet unfounded capital of the
new republic to the most remote state
thereof was nearly a third as much
again as the distance between London
and ST. Petersburg. And yet that again
is true, and the traveller who should jour-
ney as far eastward from Paris-then, as
now, the capital of Francois from
Washington, the capital of the United
States, to Tacoma, would pass through
Rome, once the capital of the greatest en-
pire of paganism, to Constantinople, the
ancient capital of the Byzantine empire,
on through Turkey, in Europe, into Per-
sia and to Teheran, its capital, and still
more startling comparisons of distances
: might be made if Alaska, the unorgan.