Yet, beyond the farthest families of the West of that day, there was
still a land so great that no one tried to measure it, or sought to
include it in the plans of family or nation. It was all a matter for
the future, for generations much later. Compared with the movements
of the past, it must be centuries before the West--whatever that term
might mean--could ever be overrun. That it could ever be exhausted
was, to be sure, an utterly unthinkable thing. There were vague
stories among the hardy settlers about new lands incredibly distant,
mythically rich in interest. But who dreamed the import of the journey
of strong-legged Zebulon Pike into the lands of the Sioux, and who
believed all his story of a march from Colorado to Chihuahua, and
thence back to the Sabine? What enthusiasm was aroused for the peaceful
settlers of the Middle West, whose neighbor was fifty miles away, by
that ancient saga, that heroically done, misspelled story of Lewis and
Clark? There was still to be room enough and chance enough in the West.