Excerpt from Francis Parkman: A Sketch

I remember, he says in the preface to The Oregon Trail, as we rode by the foot of Pike's Peak, when for a fortnight we met no face of man, my companion remarked, in a tone anything but compla (4 cent, that a time would come when those plains would be a grazing country, the buffalo give place to tame cattle, houses be scattered along the water courses, and wolves, bears, and Indians be numbered among the things that were. \ve condoled with each other on so melancholy a prospect, but with little thought what the future bad in store. We knew that there was more or less gold in the seams of those untrodden mountains, but we did not foresee that it would build cities in the West, and plant hotels and gambling houses among the haunts of the grizzly bear. We knew that a few fanatical outcasts were groping their way across the plains to seek an asylum from Gentile persecution; but we did not imagine that the polygamous hordes of Mormons would rear 11 swarming Jerusalem in the bosom of solitude itself. We knew that more and more, year after year, the trains of emigrant wagons would creep in slow procession towards barbarous Oregon or wild and distant California; but we did not dream bow Commerce and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific, the disenchanting screech of the 1000 motive break the spell of weird, mysterious mountains, woman's rights invade the fastnesses of the Arapahoes, and despairing savagery, assailed in front and rear, veil its scalp-locks and feathers before triumphant commonplace. Lve were no prophets to foresee all this; and, bad we foreseen it, perhaps some perverse regret might have tempered the ardor of our rejoicing.

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