. We see again the blue of the Pacific and the
green of the forest cedars and cypresses. High Lake Tahoe spreads
before us, with its southern fringe of emerald meadows and forest pines,
and its encircling guardians, lofty and snow-capped. The high,
grey-green deserts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming stretch before us once
more, and we can smell the clean, pungent sage brush. We are not lonely,
for life is all about us. The California quail and blue-jay, the eagle,
the ground squirrel, the gopher, the coyote, the antelope, the
rattlesnake, the big ring snake, the wild horse of the plains, the jack
rabbit, the meadow lark, the killdeer, the red-winged blackbird, the
sparrow hawk, the thrush, the redheaded wood-pecker, the grey dove, all
have been our friends and companions as we have gone along. We have seen
them in their native plains and forests and from the safe vantage point
of the front seat of our motor car.

The lofty peaks of the Rockies have towered before us in a long,
unbroken chain as we have looked at them from the alfalfa fields of
Colorado.

We have seen the bread and the cornbread of a nation growing on the
rolling prairies of Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. We have crossed the
green, pastoral stretches of Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania. The red
roads of Virginia, winding among her laden orchards of apples and
peaches and pears and her lush forests of oak and pine; the yellow roads
of Maryland, passing through her fertile fields and winding in and out
among the thousand water ways of her coast line, all come before us.
These are precious possessions of experience and memory, the choice,
intimate knowledge to which the motorist alone can attain.

The Friends of the Open Road are ours; the homesteader in his white
canopied prairie schooner, the cattleman on his pony, the passing fellow
motorist, the ranchman at his farmhouse door, the country inn-keeper
hospitably speeding us on our way.

We have a new conception of our great country; her vastness, her varied
scenery, her prosperity, her happiness, her boundless resources, her
immense possibilities, her kindness and hopefulness. We are bound to her
by a thousand new ties of acquaintance, of association, and of pride.

The Lincoln Highway is already what it is intended to be, a golden road
of pleasure and usefulness, fitly dedicated, and destined to inspire a
great patriotism and to honour a great patriot.

OCTOBER, 1914.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT BY T