THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans were French out- 

 posts in the wilderness. Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, 

 and Chicago; Omaha, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake, 

 and San Francisco these and scores of other cities now 

 populous and powerful were hidden in the womb of 

 time. Of the country between the Alleghanies and the 

 Mississippi far less was known than the world now knows 

 of Africa. The vast domain lying between the Father 

 of Waters and the Pacific Ocean was neither as well ex- 

 plored nor as perfectly comprehended as the Arctic 

 region is to-day. 



When the men of the new Republic turned their backs 

 on the Old World, in the double sense of politics and in- 

 dustry, and faced the continental opportunity which 

 awaited them, they entered upon the fiercest war of con- 

 quest in all history. And the spoils of that war were to 

 be in proportion to the magnificence of the task. 



The first effort at the subjugation of the wilderness 

 was directed to the fields and the streams. The forest 

 clearings were extended that agriculture might find room 

 for expansion. The trees felled in the process were float- 

 ed in the rivers to saw-mills driven by the current. The 

 logs, transformed to lumber, supplied the material for 

 millions of comfortable homes. In the mean time, the 

 new farms fed the growing population of the towns, 

 while a myriad of workshops, improved by inventions of 

 which a robust necessity was the prolific mother, con- 

 sumed and manufactured the textile materials from field 

 and pasture. 



The step from the crude employments of the frontier 

 to the manifold occupations of a modern industrial life 

 was easy and natural. Fostered by a generous policy of 



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