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AND PACIFIC COAST GUIDE.

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In rapid succession we pass the betterresidence
of the “old settler,’ with his immense fields of
grain and herds of stock, on beyond the boundaries
of earlier settlements; and now we reach the rude
cabin of the hardy settler who has located still
‘‘farther west,” and here, within a few years, will
arise a home as attractive as those we have left
behind, surrounded with orchards, gardens and
flocks. Here, too, will the snug school-house be
found, and the white church with its tapering
spire, pointing the people to the abode of Him
who hath so richly blessed his childten. Thereis
beauty on every hand. The wild prairie flowers,
of athousand different hues and varieties, greet
the eye at every step; and the tiniest foot that
ever trod Broadway could scarce reach the ground
without crushing the life from out some of
these emblems of purity. And when the cooling
showers have moistened the thirsty earth, or when
the morning dew is spangling flower, vine and
tree, there is more of quiet, graceful beauty—more
of that spirit floating around us which renders
man more human, and woman nearer what we
desire her to be, than can be found within the
walls of any city. Long will thememory of these
scenes remain impressed on the mind of the trav-
eler who admires nature in all her phases.

For along time, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and
Ohio were supposed to contain the wheat-grow-
ing soil of the Union, and they became known as
the ‘‘Granaries of the States.” But those ‘‘ gran-
aries ’ have pushed themselves a little “ farther
west,” if we may be allowed to use the expression.
Nebraska has retained a portion of the name;
California and Oregon took the remainder. Ne-
braska annually produces a large surplus of wheat
and corn, which finds its way eastward. With
the advantages possessed by this State; witha
water-front of several hundred miles on a stream
navigable the greater portion ofthe year; with
the grandest railroad on the continent traversing
her entire breadth; with all the resources of com-
merce at her command: with unlimited water

ower for manufactures, it will be strange, indeed,
if Nebraska does not sustain her high rank in the
great family of States.

From our present stand-point the quotation,
‘CWsTWARD THE STAR OF EmPrre Takes Its
Way,” must apply to

The Kar West—How often that sentence
has been quoted, those who are the most familiar
with the growth of our western possessions
can best remember. So often has it been ut-
tered, that it has passed into a household word,
and endowed its innocent and unsuspecting
author with an earthly immortality. From the
boyhood days of that reliable and highly re-
spectable individual, the “Oldest Inhabi-
tant” of any special locality in the ‘* Hastern
States,” it has formed the heading—in large or
small caps—of nearly every newspaper notice
which chronicled the fact that some family had
packed their heusehold goods and gods (mostly
goods) and left their native land of woods, rocks,
churches and school-houses, to seek a home
among the then mythical prairies of the “Far
West.” Butoh! in later years, how that quotation
ran across the double columns of these same
papers in all conceivable forms of type, when
the fact was chronicled that one of our West-
ern Territories was admitted as a State into the
Union.

Well, but where was your ‘Far West” then,
where people went when they had ‘t Westward,
ho!” on the brain? asks one, who speaks of the
West as that part of our country which lies be-
tween the summit of the Rocky Mountains and

the waters of the Pacific Ocean? Well, the “Far
West’ of that time, that almost mythical region,
was what now constitutes those vast and fertile
prairies which lie scuth and west of the great
lakes, and east of and bordering on the Mississippi
River. All west of that was a blank; the home of
the savage, the wild beast, and all unclean things
—at least so said the ‘* Oldest Inhabitant.”

But our hardy pioneers passed the Rubicon,
and the West receded before their advance. Mis-
souri was peopled, and the Father of Waters be-
came the great natural highway ofa mighty com-
merce, sustained in equal parts by the populous
and newly made States lying on both its banks,
which had been carved out of the ‘Far West” by
the hands of the hardy pioneers,

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri and Iowa, had joined the sisterhood,
and yet the tide of emigration stayed not. It tra-
versed the trackless desert, scaled the Rocky
Mountains, and secured a foothold in Oregon.
But it passed not by unheeding the rich valleys
and broad prairies of Nebraska, which retained
what became, with subsequent additions, a per-
manent and thriving population. Then the yel-
low gold, which had been found in California,
drew the tide of emigration thitherward, and in a
few years our golden-haired sister was added to
the number comprising the States of the Union.

Oregon and Nevada on the western slope, Kan-
sas and Nebraska on the east, followed, and, later,
Colorado, and still we have Dakota, Idaho, Mon-
tana, Washington, Utah, Arizona, and New Mex-
ico Territories, to say nothing of Alaska, waitin
the time when they too shall be competent to ad
their names tothe roll of honor and enter the |
Union on an equality with the others. Thus we
see that the *‘ Far West’’ of to-day has become
far removed from the West of thirty—or even ten—
years ago, and what is now the central portion of
our commonwealth was then the Far, far West.

All is Changed—To-day the foam-crested
waves of the Pacific Ocean bear on their bosoms a
mighty and steadily increasin commerce.
China, Japan, Australia, the Sandwich Islands,
South America, and the Orient are at our doors.

A rich, powerful, populous section, comprising
three States, has arisen, where but a few years
since the Jesuit missions among the savages were
the only marks of civilization. And all over the
once unknown waste, amid the cosy valleys and on
the broad plains, are the scattered homes of the
hardy and brave pioneer husbandmen; while the
bleak mountains—once the home of the savage and
wild beast, the deep gulches and gloomy canyons,
are illuminated with the perpetual fires of the
“ smelting furnaces,” the ring of pick, shovel and
drill, the clatter of stamps and booming of blasts,
all tell of the presence of the miner, and the
streams of wealth which are daily flowing into our
national coffers are rapidly increasing ; for, just in
proportion as the individual becomes enriched, so
does his count: PS of his fortune.

Condense istory—it is only a score of
years ago since the Government of the United
States, in order to better protect her citizens that
had spread themselves over the wild expanse of
country between the Missouri River and the Pa-
cific Ocean, and from the Mexican on the south
and the British possessions on the north, estab-
lished a system of military forts and posts, extend-
ing north and south, east and west, over this Terri-
tory. Though productive of much good, they were
not sufficient to meet the requirements of -the
times, and in many places settlers and miners
were murdered with impunity by the Indians.
Wise men regarded rapid emigration as the only