226 Singing Valleys 



might lie hidden in Colter's Hell. Already the railroads were 

 running as madly as gophers around and across the midwestern 

 states and up to the Mississippi and to the Missouri. Would 

 the railroads stop there, leaving the plains to the Arapahoe 

 and the Sioux buffalo-hunters? 



Abraham Lincoln, two years short of the Presidency, and 

 squatting there on the bluff, knew that they would not. The 

 story of American civilization would be written once again 

 on the dun-colored plains. First, the fur-trader, following the 

 Indians. Then the long-rifle men, claiming tomahawk rights, 

 living a less than semi-civilized existence, yet for all that the 

 first advance guard of the civilization they despised and turned 

 their backs on. Daniel Boone, fleeing from the plows which 

 followed at his heels, showed the plowmen the way to the 

 west. After the long-rifle men would come farmers, walking 

 beside their ox carts. Farmers with plows and women with 

 spinning wheels. Carts laden with sacks of seed corn where- 

 with to subdue the prairies and the plains. And after the first 

 farmers peddlers, merchants, steamboat and railroad men, 

 promoters of every sort, exploiting the country for the lining 

 of their own pockets, yet, somehow, always being used by the 

 genius of the land to further its wealth. 



By these well-remembered beats the American rhythm re- 

 peated itself again and again. First the lonely scout's camp- 

 fire of buffalo chips; then the sod hut. Ten years after the sod 

 huts, frame houses and windmills beside them, pulling the 

 precious water up from depths beneath the prairie. Another 

 ten years, and there would be graded roads, and savings banks 

 standing sedately where today the sagebrush sheltered a rat- 

 tlesnake's den. 



And then cities. . . . 



There are men who live so close to the wisdom of the uni- 

 verse that they know truths long before the scientists arrive 

 at these by the tabulated steps which science decrees. So Lin- 

 coln was intimately aware of the theory laid down by von 

 Liebig that "perfect agriculture is the true foundation of all 



