rat that deserves
reading because it breathes so fully the Western spirit of exultant
conquest:

"Take down your map and trace the footprints of our quadrupedantic
animal: From St. Joseph, on the Missouri, to San Francisco, on the
Golden Horn two thousand miles--more than half the distance across our
boundless continent; through Kansas, through Nebraska, by Fort Kearney,
along the Platte, by Fort Laramie, past the Buttes, over the Mountains,
through the narrow passes and along the steep defiles, Utah, Fort
Bridger, Salt Lake City, he witches Brigham with his swift pony-ship
through the valleys, along the grassy slopes, into the snow, into the
sand, faster than Thor's Thialfi, away they go, rider and horse--did
you see them? They are in California, leaping over its golden sands,
treading its busy streets. The courser has unrolled to us the great
American panorama, allowed us to glance at the home of one million
people, and has put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes. Verily
the riding is like the riding of Jehu, the son of Nimshi for he rideth
furiously. Take out your watch. We are eight days from New York,
eighteen from London. The race is to the swift." *

* Quoted in Inman's "The Great Salt Lake Trail," p. 171.

The lifetime of many and many a man has covered a period longer than
that interval of eighty-six years between 1783, when George Washington
had his vision of "the vast inland navigation of these United States,"
and the year 1869, when the two divisions of the Union Pacific were
joined by a golden spike at Promontory Point in Utah. In point of time,
those eighty-six years are as nothing; in point of accomplishment,
they stand unparalleled. When Washington's horse splashed across the
Youghiogheny in October, 1784, the boundary lines of the United States
were guarded with all the jealousy and provincial selfishness of
European kingdoms. But overnight, so to sneak these limitations became
no more than mere geometrical expressions. "Pennamite," "Erie," and
"Toledo" wars between the States, suggesting a world of bitterness and
recrimination, are remembered today, if at all, only by the cartoonist
and the playwright. The ancient false pride in mock values, so cherished
in Europe, has quite departed from the provincial areas of the United
States, and Americans can fly in a day, unwittingly, through many
States. Problems that would have cost Europe blood are settled without
turmoil in the solemn cloi