I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by them;
I remember seeing faces, hearing voices through the smoke;
I remember they were fancy—for I threw a stone to try ’em.
‘Something lost behind the Ranges,’ was the only word they spoke.
I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it
When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw.
Very full of dreams that desert: but my two legs took me through it ...
And I used to watch ’em moving with the toes all black and raw.
But at last the country altered—White man’s country past disputing—
Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind—
There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting,
Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.
Thence I ran my first rough survey—chose my trees and blazed and ringed ’em—
Week by week I pried and sampled—week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!
Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow-slide shivers—
Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!
’Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between ’em;
Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen ’em—
Saw the plant to feed a people—up and waiting for the power!
Well I know who’ll take the credit—all the clever chaps that followed—
Came, a dozen men together—never knew my desert fears;
Tracked me by the camps I’d quitted, used the water-holes I’d hollowed.
They’ll go back and do the talking. They’ll be called the Pioneers!
They will find my sites of townships—not the cities that I set there.
They will rediscover rivers—not my rivers heard at night.
By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there,
By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright.
Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
Have I kept one single nugget—(barring samples)? No, not I.
Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
But you wouldn’t understand it. You go up and occupy.
Ores you’ll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and steady
(That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors.
God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready,
Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I’ve found it, and it’s yours!