In this prosaic
travel, the days passed monotonously; but at length I found myself upon
that frontier which then marked the western edge of our accepted domain,
and the eastern extremity of the Oregon Trail.

If I can not bring to the mind of one living to-day the full picture of
those days when this country was not yet all ours, and can not restore
to the comprehension of those who never were concerned with that life
the picture of that great highway, greatest path of all the world,
which led across our unsettled countries, that ancient trail at least
may be a memory. It is not even yet wiped from the surface of the earth.
It still remains in part, marked now no longer by the rotting
head-boards of its graves, by the bones of the perished ones which once
traveled it; but now by its ribands cut through the turf, and lined by
nodding prairie flowers.

The old trail to Oregon was laid out by no government, arranged by no
engineer, planned by no surveyor, supported by no appropriation. It
sprang, a road already created, from the earth itself, covering two
thousand miles of our country. Why? Because there was need for that
country to be covered by such a trail at such a time. Because we needed
Oregon. Because a stalwart and clear-eyed democracy needs America and
will have it. That was the trail over which our people outran their
leaders. If our leaders trifle again, once again we shall outrun them.

There were at this date but four places of human residence in all the
two thousand miles of this trail, yet recent as had been the first hoofs
and wheels to mark it, it was even then a distinct and unmistakable
path. The earth has never had nor again can have its like. If it was a
path of destiny, if it was a road of hope and confidence, so was it a
road of misery and suffering and sacrifice; for thus has the democracy
always gained its difficult and lasting victories. I think that it was
there, somewhere, on the old road to Oregon, sometime in the silent
watches of the prairie or the mountain night, that there was fought out
the battle of the Old World and the New, the battle between oppressors
and those who declared they no longer would be oppressed.

Providentially for us, an ignorance equal to that of our leaders existed
in Great Britain. For us who waited on the banks of the Missouri, all
this ignorance was matter of indifference. Our men got their beliefs
from no leaders, political or editorial, at home or abroad. They