A BRIEF RETROSPECT. 



The marvelous development of the Great West has no parallel in the 

 history of the world. Little more than a quarter of a century ago fully 

 half of our continent was comparatively unknown and was associated with 

 all that was to be dreaded in the most dismal features of desert life. A 

 vast region of country stretching through twenty degrees of longitude 

 and as many of latitude, with a mighty mountain range as its backbone, 

 was, less than fifty years ago, supposed to be a barren and uninhabitable 

 waste. The bugbear in an overland trip to the Pacific Slope was the 

 crossing of the "Treeless Sand Plains" that interposed their parched and 

 cheerless expanses for nearly a thousand miles. Even the wisest states- 

 men of that time saw in all this an insurmountable obstacle to the build- 

 ing of a line of continental railway. 



The gallant Fremont, who came this way at an early day, reported 

 officially, "that all west of the Missouri Eiver was barren desert, unpro- 

 ductive, rainless and treeless." 



Many of to-day, not far advanced in years, can recall the wild, wierd 

 pictures of the "wind swept solitude," of a sand storm on the "Great 

 American Desert," and perhaps of the complete destruction of some luck- 

 less caravan. To my own mind as these lines are written, come vividly 

 the sketches of the awful doom that often overtook those who ventured 

 too far beyond the borders of civilization. Poisonous simoons were writ- 

 ten about, and the picture was not complete without reference to those 

 who had been lured to destruction by the cruel deception of the fatal 

 mirage. The hero of those days was he who had penetrated this strange 

 land and had been permitted to return safely to the "Father of Waters." 

 Now as one is hurried by the iron horse over any one of the half-dozen 

 great railways that span this same wonderful country, what a transforma- 

 tion is opened to view. Instead of the grim and hideous visions of boy- 

 hood days, the desert has blossomed and a land is seen rich in verdure, 

 dotted with cities, villages and beautiful homes and teeming with the 

 evidences of a vigorous civilization. Within little more than a score of 

 years the practical men in horticulture have made glad the waste places 



