limit of all this expansion? The farmer has ever
found more and more land on which he could make a living; he is always
taking land which his predecessor has scornfully refused. If presently
there shall come the news that the land boomer has reached the mouth
of the Mackenzie River--as long ago he reached certain portions of the
Yukon and Tanana country--if it shall be said that men are now
selling town lots under the Midnight Sun--what then? We are building a
government railroad of our own almost within shadow of Mount McKinley
in Alaska. There are steamboats on all these great sub-Arctic rivers.
Perhaps, some day, a power boat may take us easily where I have stood,
somewhat wearied, at that spot on the Little Bell tributary of
the Porcupine, where a slab on a post said, "Portage Road to Ft.
McPherson"--a "road" which is not even a trail, but which crosses the
most northerly of all the passes of the Rockies, within a hundred miles
of the Arctic Ocean.

Land, land, more land! It is the cry of the ages, more imperative and
clamorous now than ever in the history of the world and only arrested
for the time by the cataclysm of the Great War. The earth is well-nigh
occupied now. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, even Africa, are
colonization grounds. What will be the story of the world at the end
of the Great War none may predict. For the time there will be more land
left in Europe; but, unbelievably soon, the Great War will have been
forgotten; and then the march of the people will be resumed toward such
frontiers of the world as yet may remain. Land, land, more land!

Always in America we have occupied the land as fast as it was feasible
to do so. We have survived incredible hardships on the mining frontier,
have lived through desperate social conditions in the cow country, have
fought many of our bravest battles in the Indian country. Always it
has been the frontier which has allured many of our boldest souls. And
always, just back of the frontier, advancing, receding, crossing it
this way and that, succeeding and failing, hoping and despairing--but
steadily advancing in the net result--has come that portion of the
population which builds homes and lives in them, and which is not
content with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a roof above.

We had a frontier once. It was our most priceless possession. It has not
been possible to eliminate from the blood of the American West, diluted
though it has been by far less worth