Extent of the Wilderness—The First White Man—The Backbone of the Continent—A Vanished Sea and a Petrified Ocean—The Biggest Trees—The Spike of Gold.

The natural habitat of man is the wilderness. No matter how civilised he may become, his heart turns with longing to the woods, to the sea, and to the mountains. There he is unconventional; animals are his compeers, the forest his friend, the free-flowing stream nectar to his lips. Civilised peoples, after all, are but wanderers driven from the Garden of Eden by the sword of necessity. Of the virtues they claim, a large proportion is imperative, the result of conflicting numbers—society's effort to preserve itself. Men are no better, no worse, in the wilderness or in civilisation; nor does race or colour appear exactly to define quality. By noting this at the outset we may be inclined to be more sympathetic; and therefore may better understand the superb wilderness which forms the subject of this work.

Nearly two-thirds of the entire present area of the United States was comprised in it, extending between the north and south bounds of the Union, from the Mississippi on the one hand, to the Pacific on the other; a vast region of marvellous diversity, greater far than several of the Old-World empires rolled into one. Up to the hour when the Santa Maria flung her parting banners out and under the steady will of the Admiral moved upon the Western Mystery, no European had ever beheld the wide horizon of this splendid realm, nor yet even dreamed of it, for whatever in the way of exploration prior to Columbus the Northmen may have accomplished on the Atlantic coast of America, we may be sure not one of them ever set foot beyond the banks of the Father of Waters. And so this land, unknown to Europeans, remained unknown till the year when Alvar NuÑez Cabeza de Vaca, escaping from the terrible disasters of the Narvaez Florida expedition, in his enforced long wanderings, crossed the lower margin, now the State of Texas, and in 1536, less than four decades after the Discovery, gave to expectant Europe first news of the "hunchback cows" and the great interior. That was a day of marvels. After Mexico and Peru anything! Though we may smile at the imaginings of those iron-nerved Spaniards, they were not inconsistent with their time. Now the mighty tract is well known to us, but our knowledge has come piecemeal through centuries of endeavour, the last portion of the unknown yielding only so late as 1869. It is a romantic story. In these pages the salient features will be traced with special attention to the doings of the trappers and traders who bore in its conquest so dominating an influence.

In the beginning it will be well to glance at the main facts of the region, and see what it was that the newcomers were compelled to encounter and overcome before the land became theirs. Vast mountain chains there were, turbulent rivers, deserts and semi-deserts, and forbidding gorges. Almost through the middle, trending north-westerly and south-easterly, stretched the great Backbone of the continent, the Shining Mountains, or, as we now call them, the Rocky Mountains, with many peaks reaching up beyond the timber-line and into the realm of perpetual snow, peaks now familiar under the names of early explorers like Pike, Long, James, FrÉmont, etc., and whose meandering crest composed the Continental Divide, casting the rains on one side into the broad Pacific, and on the other side into the tides that laved the shores of Europe. For a considerable portion of the year deep snows upon these heights prevented all crossing, except at great hazard. This mountain range was at the same time the western limit of the most remarkable and bountiful river valley in all the world, the basin of the Mississippi, whose other edge was bounded by the verdant slopes of the Alleghanies, and which came within a stone's throw of the Niagara cataract and the Great Lakes.

Four large rivers of immense length took their rise towards the north on the summits of the Backbone, the greatest three springing like triplets of a single mother from practically the same spot in what is now Wyoming. One of these, rushing toward the north-west over a cataract that rivals Niagara, and over falls and wild rapids, swept into the Pacific through a line of dangerous breakers which, notwithstanding the labours of our best engineers, still remains a barrier to the entrance. This was the "River of the West," now the Columbia, taking its name from the ship of Captain Gray, the first to sail into its mouth. Another river, the real continuation of the Mississippi, ran its course for some three thousand miles before joining the parent stream at a point still more than a thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico, navigable in high-water season for boats of moderate draught for about two thousand miles of its length above the junction. This was the Missouri, at first the main highway from the east into the wilderness, leading the trappers and traders to the very threshold of the great mountains. The third river, the Seedskedee, the Rio Colorado Grande of the Spaniards, now the Green and Colorado, started just over the range at the head of the Missouri and the Columbia, and leaping down the westerly precipices in bold cataracts, made for the south-west and the gulf now called California, never heeding the mountain barriers, but for half its two thousand miles of length cleaving through them, a series of terrifying chasms, deep and difficult, where its waters are torn by hundreds of loud rapids, and whose tributary chasms unite with the mother gorges to interpose almost insurmountable obstacles in the path of the explorer,—the last portion of the wilderness to be vanquished and, though vanquished, yet to this day formidable and defiant. The fourth river, less in magnitude and vigour than the others, but nevertheless fractious, rose some miles southward of their birthplace on the rugged slopes of spurs of the great range, and sweeping to the south and south-east entered the Gulf of Mexico. This was the Rio Grande del Norte, now abbreviated to Rio Grande, and forming for a long distance the boundary of Mexico. It was on this river that the first settlements were made in the wilderness, by Europeans, in what is now New Mexico.

East of the huge central mountain system there rolled away from the base of the range to the Mississippi endless plains resembling a petrified ocean; the prairies, treeless, sublime in their immensity. For about half the distance from the mountains to the river, approximately as far as the 100th meridian, this enormous territory was well-nigh rainless, thus presenting an additional barrier to investigation from the eastward. The remaining half was invitingly fertile. Across these wide prairies meandered eastwardly several branches of the Missouri and the Mississippi, chief among them the Platte, the Arkansas, and Red River. West of the Backbone lay a maze of mountains, "parks," deep gorges, now called canyons, cliffs, plateaus, and valleys, limited on the far western side by a second mother-range rivalling in height and extent and impenetrability the central system itself. This was the Sierra Nevada and its upper continuation, the Cascade Range. About midway between the two master ranges another, the Wasatch, extended northerly and southerly, forming the eastern limit of the dry bed of an ancient sea of which a small remnant remained concentrated in a salt lake some fifty miles in length. This vanished sea is now known as Lake Bonneville, its old bed as the "Great Basin." Its southern rim breaks down from an altitude of about ten thousand feet in a series of mighty cliffs, like cyclopean steps, to the canyons of the Colorado, and near the summit of this rim a river starts north down into the basin, sweeping along for many miles to turn suddenly to the westward and end in a lake without visible outlet, in the middle of a stretch of desert. This is now the Sevier. West of the salt lake another stream, the Humboldt, took its rise and, darting boldly toward the Sierra as if to cut it in twain, meekly collapsed in a small lake at the foot. Between the Wasatch and the Rocky Mountains lay the valley of the Colorado, already mentioned, a marvellous labyrinth of canyons and cliffs, of dead volcanoes, lava beds, plateaus, and mountain peaks of rare beauty.

Some of the stream branches took their rise in a series of deep valleys called "parks," lying close within the main range and known to-day as North, Middle, and South parks, with still another below South Park, called San Luis Park, in which heads the Rio Grande. Thus the wide area intervening between the two chief mountain systems, the Rocky and the Sierra, was one of extraordinary topographical diversity, presenting innumerable minor mountain ranges (most of them, like the mother chains, trending northerly and southerly), lines of high cliffs of great length, extensive plateaus, and wonderful gorges like mountain ranges hollowed out and turned upside down below the surface of the earth, gorges so long and so deep as to absolutely and completely separate the areas lying on their opposite sides. East of the Rocky Mountains was the vast prairie land mentioned, while west of the Sierra lay the sunland now known as California, with the moister region of Oregon immediately above it cut in twain by the Columbia rushing triumphantly to the sea. Here too was still another lesser mountain chain, the Coast Range.

On the headwaters of the Yellowstone branch of the Missouri was a district of hot springs and geysers, famous now the world round. Here also were the great falls of the Yellowstone and its celebrated canyon, so wonderful in the variety and brilliancy of its colouring, now held, by the wisdom of Congress, for a National Park. Farther south, like a beacon for the Christian pilgrim, there shone aloft, formed in ice and snow, on the topmost slopes of a high peak, the semblance of a perfect cross. The Arkansas, in freeing itself from the mountains, carved through them a long gorge, deep and narrow, of splendid picturesqueness, which later made a highway for the locomotive. Besides the Great Salt Lake there were broad salt lagoons farther south in what is now New Mexico, and in California likewise salt spread itself by tons and tons over the surface of the ground. In Southern Utah were the superb Temples of the Rio Virgen. In the Sierra Nevada was the now celebrated Yosemite, one of the grandest valleys on the globe; and there too stood the largest known trees, patriarchs from a former age, three hundred feet in height, with trunks of enormous circumference—the Sequoia. Here also were the redwood forests, scarcely less noble than the Sequoia. The vegetation was as varied as the topography. On the prairies of what is now Kansas flourished the sensitive plant, covering the ground with its lovely rose-coloured, rose-scented blossoms, round as a puff-ball, the delicate stems withering at the touch of a human hand, to lift themselves again when the intruder had withdrawn. Farther west the antithesis of this exquisitely sensitive growth, the cactus, spread its defiant lances everywhere, and there it was the human hand and not the plant which withered at the touch. And the cactus was no less beautiful than the sensitive "rose"; indeed, more beautiful, for nothing could exceed the gorgeousness of its blossoms of various shades of red, or yellow, or white as they stood resplendent under the glowing sun against the soft colour of the earth.

At the north, and on the higher lands of the south, grew the pine trees in magnificent forests, with the beautiful spruce and cedar, the latter attaining its noblest proportions in the north-west. Towards the south, on the lower lands, grew the juniper and the piÑon, the latter bearing a delicious, edible nut, a boon to the native. In the south, too, were the mesquite with its sweet bean, and the splendid yuccas, some of them tree-like and twenty or thirty feet high, the pitahaya, and many other plants strange to European eyes. These and the cacti require a dry climate and a hot one, and the southern portion of the wilderness was particularly dry and hot. The extreme south-western part was the driest and the hottest, and there stretches of real desert interposed further obstacles to exploration and to settlement. On the other hand, the climate of the extreme north-west was the reverse. There mist and rain, nearly unknown in the lower basin of the Colorado, were almost constant. But the characteristic of the major part of the wilderness was excessive dryness, prohibiting agriculture without irrigation. The high peaks, receiving snow and rain in plenty, dealt out the moisture generously through creeks and rivers upon the parching plains roundabout.

Thus there were wide deserts as well as regions of humidity; an immense range in climate with a corresponding range in life zones, till the biologist discovered in this area specimens ranging from the boreal to the tropical. The animals were of all kinds found on the North American continent. There were scorpions, tarantulas, snakes (many varieties of rattlesnakes) in the south; there and elsewhere beaver, bison, panthers, bears, wolves, deer, elk, mountain sheep, and small game of various kinds, all adjusted to altitude or latitude. Bears were particularly numerous. The bison (buffalo) roamed the east in countless numbers, crossing the Rocky Mountains and pushing westward to the Pecos, to Green River, and to the Columbia. As a wild animal the bison now is extinct, and it is difficult to imagine the enormous herds that so short a time ago at will traversed the face of the wilderness. The beaver existed in vast numbers also, and this fact was the first incentive to exploration of the immense tract by Americans. Deer and antelope grazed everywhere and scarcely a day could pass without the traveller sighting some of these animals. All furnished subsistence to the man who was there, the Amerind. Because this person was not a European he has often been regarded as hardly worth consideration, but he was a good specimen of mankind in the hunter state. Physically and mentally he had few superiors. He knew the country as well as we know it to-day. He knew every pass in the mountains, every buffalo trail. Each tribe knew its own land limits, as well as those of its neighbours, and each defended its home with unsurpassed daring and bravery.

This was the wilderness when the hordes of Europe descended upon it and claimed it for their own. Well did they fight their way into it, and equally well did the native oppose the invasion and fight to preserve his ancestral home in all its freedom and pristine glory. But the Europeans were stronger and wrested it from him, from the animals, and from Nature; yet it was never fully theirs till the sledge drove home that last spike of gold that pinned the East and the West together and tacked the skirts of Europe to those of Cathay.