he field clean, even to-day, and gasolene
scarce yet outranks hay as a fuel for the mile makers. The settler and
the land looker move on their restless rounds in the white-canvassed
prairie schooner of old, and the great freighting outfits, which have
borne the tonnage of the West since there was a white man's West, still
churn the dust with the hoofs of their straining horses and the wheels
of their lurching wagons. You will find them everywhere in the railless
lands, the freighters and their teams. They are camped by the water-hole
in the desert, or where there is no water, and they must depend upon
barrels they bring with them. The little fire of sagebrush roots or
greasewood shows the string of wagons--two, three, or four--strung out
by the roadside with the horses, from four to twelve, munching hay. They
are in the timber, in the country of lakes to the south, on the grassy
ranges. In fact, you find the freighters where there is freight to be
hauled, and that is--where men are.

But to-day all of Central Oregon is not railroadless land, the trail of
steel has pushed to the heart of the country, and what a contrast to the
old Shaniko stage days it is to roll smoothly into Bend over
ninety-pound rails! Picturesque, too, was the sudden breaking of the
long spell when the transportation kings constructed their lines up the
Canyon of the Deschutes. Twice, as they built, I walked the length of
that hundred-mile-long defile, seeing the dawn of progress in the very
breaking, and viewing what is to me the most stupendously appealing
river scenery in all the Northwest--this same Canyon of the Deschutes.

CHAPTER V

How the Railroads Came

When the West moves, it moves quickly. The map of Oregon had long shown
a huge area without the line of a single railroad crossing it. This
railless land was Central Oregon, the largest territory in the United
States without transportation. Then, almost over night, the map was
changed.

Normal men, if they are reasonably good, hope to go to Heaven.
Westerners, if they are off the beaten track, hope for a railroad; and
if they have one road they hope for another! You who dwell in the little
land of suburban trains and commutation tickets have no conception of
the vital significance of rail transportation in the Land of Many Miles.

In Central Oregon the railroad question was one of life and death. The
country had progressed so far without them, and could go no farther.
Farm pr