FRONTIERSPIECE 



these pioneers of the interminable forests, mighty 

 rivers, exhaustless mines and limitless plains, who have 

 made all these comforts possible. Well, too, if we 

 curtail our misuse of this heritage which tends to that 

 depleting epidemic of civilization, civilizitis. 



The printed story of the adventures and sufferings of 

 these pioneer caravans over the great trek from 1843 

 to 1859 is a mere synopsis of the actualities. The story 

 of The Old Emigrant Trail, the only name by which 

 the pioneers knew it, is an epic in American life, and 

 the emigration to Oregon marks an era in American his- 

 tory — "Its like is not in all history." 



In these pages it is my privilege to pass on in a 

 meagre way fragments of the pioneer's message and 

 to portray remnants of a portion of his pioneer life. 

 Altho those who read may have known him not, it is 

 believed that they will feel in these episodes and de- 

 scriptions at least a faint echo of his heart throbs 

 which have become the pulse beats of a nation's life. 



The Star of Empire, ever beckoning toward the 

 Eldorado of man's hope, brought the last shift of the 

 frontier of Europe to the Sundown Sea. Our country 

 is productive, our position is strategic, and our climate 

 produces an energetic population ; all this coupled with 

 the fact that the United States was fundamentally 

 peopled by an Anglo-Saxon race, determines our des- 

 tiny. 



The Orient, through the great tide of the Jehad or 

 Holy War of Islam, really the great Arab migration, 

 reached the very gates of Poitiers, before it was 

 stemmed and turned back by Charlemagne. The tidal 

 wave of the Orient is now flowing on the other flank 

 of Western civilization. On this last frontier of Eu- 

 rope our West meets East. Our trade expansion is 



