to run the political race, become the members of the legislature of some future state, find themselves thrown in the shade by those of greater attainments who follow in their wake, and again to push for the "new purchase."
Fearlessness, hospitality, and independent frankness, united with restless enterprise and unquenchable thirst for novelty and change, are the peculiar characteristics of the western pioneers. With him there is always a land of promise further west, where the climate is milder, the soil more fertile, better timber and finer prairies; and on, on, on, he goes, always seeking and never attaining the Pisgah of his hopes. You of the old states can not readily conceive the every-day sort of business an "old settler "makes of selling out his "improvements," hitching the horses to the big wagon, and, with his wife and children, swine and cattle, pots and kettles, household goods and household gods, starting on a journey of hundreds of miles to find and make a new home.
Just now Oregon is the pioneer's land of promise. Hundreds are already prepared to start thither with the spring, while hundreds of others are anxiously awaiting the action of congress in reference to that country, as the signal for their departure. Some have already been to view the country, and have returned with a flattering tale of the inducements it holds out. They have painted it to their neighbors in the brightest colors; these have told it to others; the Oregon fever has broke out, and is now raging like any other contagion. Mr. Calhoun was right when he told the senate that the American people would occupy that country independent of all legislation; that in a few years the pioneers of the West would overrun it and hold it against the world. "Wilson," said I a few days since to an old settler, "so you are going to Oregon." "Well, I is, horse. Tice Pitt was out looking at it last season, and he says it is a leetle the greatest country on the face of the earth. So I'm bound to go." "How do the old woman and the girls like the idea of such a long journey?" "They feel mighty peert about it, and Suke says she shan't be easy till we start."
Extract from a lecture by George L. Hillard, on "The Connection Between Geography and History," delivered before the American Institute of Instruction at Hartford, Conn., August, 1845:—
There are no considerable tracts of land wholly unfitted for agricultural purposes within the limits of the United States. Between us and the Pacific there is an extensive region of this kind of about 800 miles in length and 600 miles in breadth, including the Rocky Moun-
