A Trip to the Rockies

by B. R. Corwin

Through all the streaming landscape of green field

And lovely village. On their pillared lines,

Distances flash to distances their thoughts,

And all is one abode of all the joy

And happiness that civilization yields!’

“Out from the Mohawk, is Saratoga, and delicious Lake George, and beyond, the Adirondacks with its wealth of forest and beauty, its lofty pine trees and its loftiest mountain peak which we call Mt. Marcy, but which our Indian Fathers with more aptitude named ‘Ta haw us,’—‘He splits the sky!’ Beyond is the glorious St. Lawrence with its thousand islands, and Ontario and Erie which encircle the lands of the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas with their little sparkling lakes; and between our own confines and the border of Her Majesty’s Dominions is that most sublime sentinel of the whole continent—grand old Niagara!

“The Western man, more frequently than the Eastern, travels throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and appreciates its soil and climate, its wonderful resources of coal and iron, and its commercial city of Philadelphia, with its thousands of pleasant homes and its hundreds of beautiful industries. Its sister states of New Jersey and Maryland are on either side and baby Delaware between. Baltimore is the birthplace of the song of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ If there are those who do not particularly enjoy the scenery of mountain and forest, brook and river, and bay and valley of these Commonwealths, there is no one, I am sure, who does not love the fish and the crabs and the oysters and the canvas-back duck of the Chesapeake, which is the most beautiful and bountiful public larder of the universe! And close to Baltimore is magnificent Washington, the capital of our common country. In another direction to the east is Bunker Hill and Boston Harbor and the ‘Hub,’ and all the people ‘way down East’ who have for eighty years been sending their sons to the West to found great commonwealths like Kentucky and Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas, and other wonderful States like those that surround us, and others still upon the more and more distant frontier.

“The children of the East are proud of the East and the children of the West are proud of the West. I lived for a number of years in Minnesota when it was a territory, and I am told by my friends that I made the Eastern people—to use a slang expression—‘tired’ in singing the praises of the land of the Dakotas. After I had located myself in New York, upon a return from a visit to Minnesota I met an old friend in Chicago with whom I had an earnest conversation in reference to the rapid progress of the West. We were both Western men in our enthusiasm, but when he found that I had located in New York he expressed his dissatisfaction by saying: ‘New York! Why, in a few years New York will be to Chicago what Liverpool is to London; New York, like Liverpool, will be the seaport town, but Chicago, like London, will be the great interior city!’ His sudden exclamation nearly took me from my feet, but when I recovered I answered him as earnestly: ‘When Chicago reaches its population of fifteen hundred thousand New York will add to its boundaries a few of its suburbs like Brooklyn and Jersey City and Newark and Hoboken, when it will have a population of three millions, and give Chicago another pull of half a century!’

“But I have been in the habit for years of visiting the West frequently, in order to watch its progress and study geography,—for seeing is believing. I have just spent two days in Chicago, and now find myself for the first time in Kansas City, which was called by more than one person in Chicago whom I met, ‘Chicago No. 2!’ And I have come to the conclusion that possibly what my enthusiastic Chicago friend said, and what I heard Governor Seward also say in the city of St. Paul in the year 1856, is true—‘that somewhere here, in the State of Illinois, the State of Kansas, or the State of Minnesota—somewhere here in this galaxy of States, which we call the Northwest, there will be built a great interior city, larger than any of our seaport towns.’

“The Eastern cities will however, for years contest with you the right to excel them in population, in intelligence, and in wealth. We acknowledge your rapid progress. We know that forty years ago Chicago had just begun to exist and that many of your other cities were unknown.