{"collection":"mor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/mor/tfd/chap01.htm","path":"mor/tfd/chap01.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/mor/tfd/chap01.htm","text":"I WAS one of the multitude of young men who heeded Horace Greeley's advice, \"Go \nWest, young man, go West!\" in the days when he was the ruling spirit of the New \nYork Tribune. Discredited as a prospective president by the people at the polls, \nhe yet was accepted by many as a prophet of agricultural authority on the \"Opportunity \nof the Great West.\"\nTo me, from boyhood, the word \"Mississippi\" had a winsome charm. I had read of De \nSoto and the Jesuit Fathers as the first voyagers on the great river of the West, \nof the Lewis and Clark explorations by the pen of Washington Irving in his Astoria: \nand to go West, was my one aim as conditions were ripe for it. The great lakes to \nthe North and the cane-brakes to the South were not in it with the West as a drawing \ncard to me. I left the charmed scenery of central New York state in the early spring \nof '74 headed for the wonderful Porkopolis of Chicago. That city was just beginning \nto rise from the ashes of the terrible fire of '71 when I first set foot in it. \nWide areas resembling San Francisco in 1906 were black with the fire's work, and \ntemporary board structures even at the depots were in common evidence. But there \nwas the tang and the vim of the West in the faces of its hustling population that \nforetold the vigorous growth of after years. Crossing Ohio, I passed through the \nfamous Western Reserve, supposed to be, in its day, the real West. When I saw the \norderly neatness of farm, road, and townsite, I smiled at the invitation of an old \ncollege chum of the previous year; \"When you are in the West be sure to call on \nme in the Western Reserve. I live at Youngstown, Ohio.\"\nThe \"Father of Waters,\" as the Indians so fitly call the Mississippi, was bank-full \nwhen I crossed it one Tuesday morning. The prairies of Illinois and Wisconsin were \ngreen with the early spring color that also clothed the trees along the borders \nof this great stream. I was not disappointed, save with the awkwardly built stern-wheel \nsteamers, that were either wildly swinging down or laboriously puffing up its course. \nWhen I stepped off the cars at Dubuque, Iowa, at last fairly West, I delighted in \nthe breezy speech and the freedom of the people; men and women of adaptation to \ncircumstances,-of a width of view like the plains that they were subduing.\nFor a year Iowa with its agricultural beauties along the Mississippi held me prisoner. \nThen the craving for the far West took hold of me as I heard the accounts of the \nreturning pioneers of Kansas or Nebraska. The plague of locusts had driven them \nback and they had returned for supplies for another start.\nIt will be remembered that Uncle Sam was more than generous in his land gifts at \nthis time. The pre-emption laws allowed pioneers to buy outright one hundred and \nsixty acres of the best level land in Iowa and Minnesota at one dollar and twenty-five \ncents an acre. Five years' time was given to pay for this, no other obligation was \nrequired beyond the settler's own interests to live on it and improve it.\nI saw, as I travelled west, hundreds of these pre-emptors at work building small \nsod or frame houses, and breaking up the heavy grassed prairies. The cars to western \nIowa and Minnesota were crowded every day with land seekers. The Danes, Norwegians \nand Swedes were mainly in evidence; so new to the country that they could not make \nthemselves understood, but had to talk through their agents when inquiring, or buying. \nThese people's descendants of this day are the intelligent and prosperous farmers \nof the choicest locations in country and town. Beginning with nothing but their \nbrawn and industry, they are independent citizens of the best prairie states.\nI crossed another great river at Omaha, the Missouri. With the imagination of youth, \nI saw the older population of this country of illimitable plains. The Pawnees, the \nSioux, the Omahas, whose gatherings gave the name to Council Bluffs, upon the Iowa \nside. I saw also the black rolling tide of bison racing before the yelling red hunters \nor before the redder tongues of prairie fires. While I was denied my hope of running \ndown a buffalo, I was able to see several of them in their wild state, as I went \nfarther west. A great and reckless slaughter had thinned them down but one did not \nthen have to visit a government park to see a buffalo.\nIt was a great event in that day for the overland express to leave Omaha for San \nFrancisco. People made preparation for this pullman ride with all the gravity of \na sea voyage. Baskets of supplies, wraps, rugs, and dust coats filled the arms of \nthe passengers boarding the cars.\nThe express averaged sixteen miles an hour, including stops. The road-bed was of \nvery light caliber and simply spiked down without fishplates, allowing no forty \nmiles an hour speed. We swayed and teetered along some parts of the road in a way \nthat reminded me of a branch line on the Grand Trunk in Canada, where the train \ndipped and curtseyed in the cuttings like a sail boat on the lakes. No harm came \nof it. We stopped often for fuel and water, and to oil up the small, wide-funneled \nengine, or to cool a hot-box in the heavily freighted baggage car.\nThe winds of Nebraska are worthy of mention for they are in the business of blowing, \nand if the people are much affected by them, they are certainly in danger of being \nthe biggest boosters of the West. Anyway, I saw the effect of these constant winds \non all faces; the men being as red as Indians and the women, despite the long poke \nbonnets they wore, were almost as brown. Ma-dame Recamier's cream so much advertised \nthen, should have had a great sale in Nebraska, if the women were at all solicitous \nof their complexions. But they were all of stern stuff and did not mind the Nebraska \nbreezes, whether hot as a blast in summer, or cold as a blizzard in winter. They \nwere a people that moved as briskly as their winds, going at top speed in their \nbuggies and on horseback.\nI saw women riding astride and they rode like cowboys. There were villages of marmots \nor prairie dogs and these little canines shared their earth-holes with both snakes \nand owls. Once in a while \"Lo,\" the Indian, in his native costume was seen on a \nhill near-by sitting on his cayuse, stoically viewing the white man's fire wagons \nas they trailed past. These natives were also in evidence at every eating station, \neither to sell their bead and buffalo ornaments, or to share in the white man's \nfire-water.\nThose were the days of corn-whiskey, as yellow as gold and as hot as fire, and which \nkeeled over the drinker at \"forty rods.\" The western men aboard the cars, filled \nup with four fingers of this stuff at every stop. Temperance was not to the fore \nthen and the front streets of railroad towns were given up to saloons of vigorous \ntitles, and they were black with men from the cattle ranges around. These bandy-legged \nbravos whooped 5 and rode races with the cars and even wasted some ammunition in \ncelebration of the passing express, that scarcely out-speeded their ponies.\nThose days are gone. The cowboy is now historic. The open range is now homesteaded \nor desert-claimed by the nester. The great meat manufactory has passed from the \nrange, and is now in the hands of the farmer, who stall-feeds his cattle on the \ncultivated roots and grains of the ranches.\nWith the next morning's sun we saw the faint outline of the Rocky Mountains. We \nhad been slowly climbing and the elevation was sufficient to lower the horizon line \nof this backbone of the continent. I was interested to see with my own eyes those \nmountains made famous in my boyhood days by the stories of that writer for boys, \nCaptain Mayne Reid.\nThough the scenes that he so graphically described were in the great range farther \nto the south, and on the Mexican border, yet the name, Rocky Mountains, satisfied \nme that I was in the neighborhood of those old friends Rube and Geary in Scalp-Hunters, \nor The War Trail. We are more or less children and beneath the layers of riper years, \nlie recumbent the old imaginations of youth. So I sat and deamed again my boyhood \nhours and felt young, though sad, since I could never be a boy again, nor see the \nboy companions of those book days. Scattered to the four corners of the globe, some \nat sea, some at antipodes, some citified and thus changed; and one old chum gone \naway to the far country from which no traveller returns.\nWhat a day that was for the prospector and the cattle man! The sheep-man, so omnipresent \nin Australia, was despised and seldom seen in this great West. The cattle owner \nhated the sheepman almost as much as he did the Indian. It was the day of gun rule, \nfor the sheriff and the constable were persons few and far between. The reprobate \nwas in the land by voice and deed. All the dare-devils and the scum of the East \ndrifted this way, and were stranded like river debris, in these little, hideous \nshanty railroad towns. Ten years earlier these characters ran everything to suit \nthemselves. The war was still raging, and Uncle Sam's hands full, thus giving the \nrowdy and robber full swing to kill and steal. Some of these gentry were still about, \nwith faces hardened by excess and crime, yet the great majority had gone to the \ngreater majority via the hangman's rope or the hands of the Vigilante Committee \nand the yet quicker way of the sawed off shot-gun.\nNext came the canyons. I had always thrilled at that word; it seemed to suggest \nroaring waters, Mexican riders and red-men yelling. These canyons were tame, the \nsurveyors had selected the best grades and the engineers had made a level road for \nthe rails. We went orderly along these mountain streets, with little noise beyond \nthe tired asthmatic cough of our over-taxed engines, for we now had two engines \nto draw us up these heights. How frail they looked, compared with the immense monsters \nof to-day, dun colored and mighty, without brightness or glitter beyond their headlight! \nOur engines were gaudy ones, brass bound, bright-painted, polished to the shining \npoint, showing all their works to the onlooker; the cylinder and driving-rods working \nin full view. We halted at last to change cars; it was Ogden, at the junction of \nthe Union and Central Pacific Railroads.\nWe saw here, for the first time, the orange-colored cars, which took all over-landers \nto California. I was not booked for the real sea, but was bound for the Great Salt \nLake, or Salt Sea, in Utah Territory. As I looked around I missed the green earth \nand the wide expanse of the plains. I found that I was among rocks of craggy height, \noverlooking little narrow valleys, where irrigation was needed to make things grow. \nI was m the far West at last though I knew that there was a farther West, which \nsome day I meant to see A lazy train soon started with the regulation speed of sixteen \nmiles to the hour and we slowly passed along the south line of the Salt Lake, a \nsea so dead and dreary that it resembled dead sea of that memorable land, ancient \nPalestine. Then we came, at last, to the city of the Latter Day Saints.","title":"Chapter I: Going West in 1874","type":"page"}