Manhood and Statehood 209 



primeval forest, who guided their white-topped wag 

 ons across the endless leagues of Indian-haunted 

 desolation, and explored every remote mountain- 

 chain in the restless quest for metal wealth. Behind 

 them came the men who completed the work they 

 had roughly begun: who drove the great railroad 

 systems over plain and desert and mountain pass; 

 who stocked the teeming ranches, and under irriga 

 tion saw the bright green of the alfalfa and the yel 

 low of the golden stubble supplant the gray of the 

 sage-brush desert; who have built great populous 

 cities cities in which every art and science of civ 

 ilization are carried to the highest point on tracts 

 which, when the nineteenth century had passed its 

 meridian, were still known only to the grim trappers 

 and hunters and the red lords of the wilderness with 

 whom they waged eternal war. 



Such is the record of which we are so proud. It 

 is a record of men who greatly dared and greatly 

 did; a record of wanderings wider and more dan 

 gerous than those of the Vikings ; a record of endless 

 feats of arms, of victory after victory in the cease 

 less strife waged against wild man and wild nature. 

 The winning of the West was the great epic feat in 

 the history of our race. 



We have, then, a right to meet to-day in a spirit 

 of just pride in the past. But when we pay homage 

 to the hardy, grim, resolute men who, with incred- 



