sippi;
from the frosts where it rises to the fervid waters in which it pours,
for 3,000 miles it would be visible, fed by rivers that flow from every
mile of the Alleghany slope, and edged by the green embroideries of the
temperate and tropic zones; beyond this line another basin, too--the
Missouri--catching the morning, leads your eye along its western slope
till the Rocky Mountains burst upon the vision, and yet do not bar it;
across its passes we must follow, as the stubborn courage of American
pioneers has forced its way, till again the Sierras and their silver
veins are tinted along the mighty bulwark with the break of day; and
then over to the gold fields of the western slope, and the fatness of
the California soil, and the beautiful valleys of Oregon, and the
stately forests of Washington, the eye is drawn, as the globe turns out
of the night shadow; and when the Pacific waves are crested with
radiance, you have the one blending picture--nay, the reality--of the
American domain. No such soil--so varied by climate, by products, by
mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and
by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of configuration and
bordered by both warm and icy seas--no such domain, was ever given to
one people.

And then suppose that you could see in a picture as vast and vivid the
preparation for our inheritance of this land. Columbus, haunted by his
round idea, and setting sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him,
while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of
every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the
Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of
British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to
Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness,
and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and
Christian trust; then the gradual interblending of effort and interest
and sympathy into one life--the congress of the whole Atlantic slope--to
resist oppression upon one member; the rally of every State around
Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him
when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the
farthest West with North and South, into one polity and communion; when
this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life, under the
stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth,
su