WINTER MEETING. 185 



Some one may say that much of our eight i^^orth western states is 

 very broken and mouatainous ; so it is, and so is two-thirds of Japan 

 a broken mountainous country, and her tillable lands have been worked 

 and worn for more than a thousand years ; yet she sustains a popula- 

 tion of 39,000,000, and her annual export trade amounts to $21,000,000, 

 -and in the last generation, since she came in touch with Uncle Sam 

 through the Perry treaty of 1853, she has made greater progress than 

 SbUj European country has in the last J 00 years, and now in her conflict 

 with the great empire of China, with 10 times her own population, she 

 marches on from victory to victory, and to Europe and Uncle Sam she 

 «ays, hands off. 



Now, one secret of Japan's great victories is to be found in the 

 fact that she is a nation of intelligent horticulturists ; they grow and 

 «at apples, pears, plums, peaches, apricots, pomegranates, figs, oranges, 

 lemons, grapes, rice and vegetables. 



But what of our eight Northwestern states "? I cannot now speak 

 of each in detail ; suffice it to say that each one is within itself an 

 empire of no mean dimensions. As a whole, ihey are composed of 

 level and rolling prairies and valleys of inexhaustible fertility, which 

 are well adapted to grass, cereal and vegetable productions; of 

 mountain lands, much of the surface of which is covered with beautiful 

 forests of pine, cedar, oak and other valuable timber ; and internally 

 they contain large and inexhaustible deposits of coal, iron, lead, zinc, 

 granite, marble, jasper, gold, silver and salt ; their many streams and 

 rivers afford vast water-power, and their numerous clear and beautiful 

 lakes abound in fish ; and in the Yellowstone National park in Wyoming 

 are to be found the most grand and wonderful geysers on the globe. 



"But," some one remarks, "many of the pioneer settlers of the 

 Northwest have become discouraged, are giving up and deserting the 

 country." Yes, we people of Missouri in the last few months have 

 beheld many prairie schooners wending their way from the Northwest 

 into grand old Missouri, the best of all states and all countries, and we 

 throw our gates wide open and bid them a hearty welcome. 



But let us not delude ourselves with the idea that the great North- 

 -west is to be deserted and become an unoccupied desert. Many brave 

 and worthy people in the early settlement of New England, one of 

 the fairest and now thickly settled portions of our country, once re- 

 coiled from the herculean task of building their homes in a new and 

 sparsely settled country; but other brave men and women came to fill 

 their places, and the work of conquering the North American wilder- 

 ness went on, and will continue to go on till every one of our great 

 northwestern states will be filled with a teeming population of Indus- 



