KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

Or the vast territory embraced within our national boundaries,
stretching from ocean to ocean, three-fifths lie west of the Mis-
sissippi, that great Mediterranean river which bisects it from
north to south, dividing it into two vast and strongly distinctive
and dissimilar sections. In this estimate I do not include the
territory recently purchased from Russia. The one is partially
occupied in all its parts; the other is only beginning to be oceu-
pied around its borders. The one is now the home of more than
nine-tenths of our people; a century hence, it may be, the dwell-
ing-place of a majority of the American people will be in the
other. The one is a land of forests and navigable rivers, with
mountain systems of moderate altitude, and with topographical
features greatly diversified, often beautiful, but rarely grand; the
other, for the most part, is made up of vast prairies of surpassing
beauty and fertility, and of stupendous mountains, rich in almost
all varieties of minerals, yet presenting barriers to human pro-
gress more formidable, perhaps, than are to be found anywhere
else on the earth’s surface. The one is a good country, surpass-
ingly good, as the past progress and prosperity of our people
abundantly attest; but no man can travel long over the match-
less region which lies beyond the river,—a garden three times
the area of France, with mountains beyond sufficient to supply
the ever-advancing world with precious metals, and an ocean
beyond them, with more people upon its shores and islands than
are found on all the other waters of the globe,— without coming
to the strong conviction that the trans-Mississippi section is still
better.

But this portion of the earth’s surface is as unique as it is
stupendous. While one part is sublime in altitude and rugged
grandeur, the other and nearer part is equally so in its vast ex-
tent and its continuous yet ever-varying beauty. Those prairies

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