Possibly there are those who find themselves thinking that Western
tales are travelers' tales and must be taken with "a grain of salt."
Some also say that the man who crosses the Missouri never is able to
tell the truth again; this is crude, I know, and in some cases true,
but they who are so afflicted were just the same before they ever saw
the Missouri.
Our waterless areas were considered by Captain Bonneville (as told by
Washington Irving) utterly barren and forever hopeless wastes. In
Astoria--chapter thirty-four--these words are used:
"In this dreary desert of sand and gravel of the Snake here and there
is a thin and scanty herbage, insufficient for the horse or the
buffalo. Indeed, these treeless wastes between the Rocky Mountains and
the Pacific are even more desolate and barren than the naked, upper
prairies on the Atlantic side; they present vast desert tracts that
must ever defy cultivation, and interpose dreary and thirsty wilds
between the habitations of man, in traversing which the wanderer will
often be in danger of perishing."
So thought Captain Bonneville; so wrote the matchless American
_littérateur_, Washington Irving, of "Sunnyside," author and
authority, creator of The Life of George Washington, and the Broken
Heart, which made Lord Byron weep. The doughty Captain Benjamin L. E.
Bonneville, who died as late as 1878, obtaining leave of absence and a
furlough, endured the pleasure of hardships common to the explorer,
and through his happy biographer added the Trail to literature; but
his eye of vision did not see these great stones of the commonwealth,
Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The very region so
carefully pictured above as the dreariest of deserts, a veritable
Western Sahara, is the exact location of Idaho and a large portion of
Oregon; a region perfectly adapted to the sustenance of immense
population and intense development.
Moses understood all the wisdom of the Egyptians. We do not, but we do
know that the biggest thing in an arid country is the ditch. America's
triumph to date in the twentieth century is the completion of the
Panama Ditch. The ditch is in Idaho more valuable by far than the
land, for without it the parched soil is practically worthless, being
an area of shimmering sand, where the ash-colored and dust-covered
sagebrush breeds the loathsome horned toad, the rough-and-ready
rattlesnake, and the slinking, night-hunting coyote, which preys on
the lithe-limbed, loping jack rabbit.
The modern Western American is rapidly learning a modified wisdom of
the ancient irrigators of Egypt, and already knows how to drain the
irrigated acres and leech these old alluvial plains. From the days
when the frosty glacial plowman ran his deep basaltic furrows for the
majestic Snake and other streams, these gorges of nature had been only
mossy beds over which lazily slid the unmeasured volumes down to the
western and "bitter moon-mad sea." Now man, the mightiest of all
magicians, has lured the liquid serpents from their age-long couches,
cut them into thousands of smaller streams, and sent them bravely
abroad on the face of the protesting desert, drowning its death and
making it to bloom and blossom.
As a concrete instance of the artificial possibilities of Idaho and
contiguous regions, I will here instance a statement made for me by
the Rev. H. W. Parker, superintendent of Pocatello District, and
resident of Twin Falls, under date of October, 1914: "Where ten years
ago this very minute there was not a fence nor a furrow (only the
conditions above described by Washington Irving) there are now such
municipalities as Twin Falls, Filer, Rupert, Burley, and others soon
to be as fine. As pastor in 1904, my first official trip to Twin Falls
was made on July 14. I found one or two frame buildings and some tents
stuck around in the sagebrush; some streets had been marked out, but
no grading had been done. Dust, heat, and sagebrush were the main
features of the place. In October I preached the first sermon ever
delivered by any minister in the new village. The congregation
numbered forty-one. On February 5, 1905, I organized the first church
with seventeen members; on May 23, 1909, we dedicated the present
edifice at a cost of $18,000, exclusive of the lots.
"To-day this church has a membership of more than five hundred. This
youngster has turned back into the treasuries of the denomination in
regular collections more than $3,000. The city has to-day seven thousand
people. There are between four and five miles of asphalt-paved
streets, a perfect sewer system, and cement sidewalks throughout the
whole municipality. An investment of $120,000 has been made in two
splendidly equipped grade school buildings, besides a high school
costing a quarter of a million dollars. These combined schools have an
enrollment of over two thousand pupils with a teaching force of above
sixty; the high school graduated forty-eight last commencement. There is
not a saloon in the entire county."
Surely "progress" is here spelled in large letters.
Years ago, with the narrow strip along the Atlantic in mind,
Longfellow wrote, "God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat
for this planting." And as the mighty empire took its course toward
the West of limitless opportunity the good God kept the sieve running
full time, so that to-day
The best of the best
Are in the Northwest.
[Illustration: END OF THE TRAIL]