“A mighty good name, considering how we’re at the jumping-off place of the United States. Seems to me, Rob, that the Far West has always gone by the name of the Land of the Setting Sun.”
“That’s why the arch has been built,” Rob told him. “You see, in pioneer days the constant drift was always this way. Men who founded homes in what was then the wilderness along the Ohio kept hearing wonderful stories about the richness of the soil farther west, and what unlimited fur-bearing animals were to be captured by those daring enough to take the risk.”
“And so they kept pushing farther and farther, year in and year out. In this way settlers finally overran the prairies, and crossed the Rockies?” asked Andy, as he surveyed the beautiful arch that had been raised to commemorate the dreams of the men who blazed the way of civilization through the wilderness.
“Yes, and here along the shore of the Pacific lay the end of the dream,” explained the scout leader. “California represented the foot of the rainbow of promise those hardy men had seen painted in the sky. The western sun meant a whole lot in those days; it shone over the Land of Promise; it was the hope and ambition of almost every settler. No one drifted East; it was always into the mysterious and beckoning West that families emigrated.”
Around them were crowds of eager sight-seers. At times they jostled elbows with representatives of numerous foreign nations.
“But there are not near so many foreigners visiting the Panama-Pacific Exposition as there would have been only for the terrible European war that’s raging across the ocean,” Rob happened to remark a little later when the other scout called his attention to a group of dark-featured men wearing the red fezzes of Orientals, and passing along as though viewing the wonders of the exhibition with a lively interest.
“I suppose the building erected by California is reckoned the largest one of all on the grounds, isn’t it, Rob? How much space does it cover, do you know?”
“They say five acres, Andy, which you must own is a shack of some size.”
“We haven’t been in it yet,” said Andy, “but I should imagine it must hold about everything connected with the life of the big State. Why, it would take a whole day to get around there, and see half of the things on exhibition.”
“Plenty of time for all that when we settle down to the business of sight-seeing,” Rob told him. “First of all I want to get this load off my hands,” and he moved the suitcase as he spoke; “not that it’s very heavy, you understand, only it weighs on my mind; but what it holds means sleepless nights for our good friend, Professor McEwen, until he gets my wire that it has been safely delivered.”