CHAPTER I 
THE WEST 
Wuat is the West? The very word “West” is fas- 
cinating, full of inspiration and attainment. We have all 
felt the impulse of Greeley’s wise advice, “Go west, 
young man.” Not only do we want to be in the West 
ourselves, but every state and every country wants to be 
a part of the West. Probably the only countries that do 
not claim to be West are India and China. Japan no 
longer admits herself as being eastern, but now claims to 
be the West, to say nothing of the western pretensions of 
the remainder of the world, from New York to Petrograd. 
But regardless of the claims of others, there is in the minds 
of the American people but one West and that is the great 
region lying between the one-hundredth meridian and the 
Pacific Ocean. In this book we shall deal exclusively with 
this territory, comprising the western parts of the Dakotas, 
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and the whole 
of the eleven states of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New 
Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, 
Oregon, and California. 
TOPOGRAPHY 
With the exception of some areas in the extreme west 
and southwest, all of the territory considered under the 
general term of “The West,” as used in this book, lies at 
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