1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 75 



IMPRESSIONS RECEIVED FROM RAMBLES IN THE WEST. 



BY PROF. LEVI STOCKBRIDGE OF AMHERST. 



What, and where the West is located, is a matter of great 

 uncertainty to-day. In the public mind, it has been con- 

 stantly changing during the last forty years, and very rap- 

 idly during the last twenty. In my boyhood days, the 

 West, — the far-away and almost unknown AVest, was in 

 the Genesee and Black Kiver valleys of New York. And 

 then, passing over the region in the south-west part of that 

 State, it was located along the valleys of the Ohio Eiver 

 and its northern tributaries, and the shores of Lake Erie. 

 At that time the " Great North-west" was the territory of 

 Michigan, respecting which as fabulous stories were told of 

 the opportunities for getting rich quickly and by head-work 

 alone, as have since been rehearsed of more distant regions. 

 Soon the West was described to us as the boundless prairie- 

 land of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, with a soil so fer- 

 tile that the only implements of tillage needed to secure the 

 most marvelous crops, were a plough to turn the sod, and 

 an axe to cut a hole in it, to insert the seed corn ; and all 

 centering at a mud-sunken shanty town at the south end of 

 Lake Michigan, called Chicago. Then the Rock River 

 country was the West, and its location gradually receded 

 until it reached and crossed the Mississippi, and spread out 

 in eastern Iowa. Here it lingered within reach of navigable 

 waters for several years, for it was found that when the land 

 carriage of farm crops was so extended, and the roads so 

 bad, that it took two days' time and a pair of horses to 

 convey enough of the crop to a place of sale to procure a 

 pound of tea and a year's supply of family salt, the West 

 had lost its immense attractions. Then Texas, with its 

 measureless area and uncertain and disputed boundaries, 

 was annexed to our south-western limits ; and soon after, 

 by force or fraud, — or both. New Mexico and California 

 were gathered in, and our West halted by the waters of 

 the Pacific Ocean. The precious metals were soon dis- 

 covered in the rocks and sands of the latter State, fol- 

 lowed l)y a gold fever, rising higher and higher, until it 

 reached the point of a frenzied craze, and men lost their 



