West (region)

“ The prevalent character of the whole range of scenery in the region, and the general impression made by it on the eye and mind, were so vividly conveyed that no one familiar with the country can fail to recognise how faithfully the innermost soul of the West Highlands is rendered. ”

“ The relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the rest of the United States is an important element in the significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains ”

“ It has State universities, rivaling in conservative and scientific economic instruction those of any other part of the Union, and its citizens more often visit the East, than do Eastern men the West. As time goes on, its industrial development will bring it more into harmony with the East.
Moreover, the Old Northwest holds the balance of power, and is the battlefield on which these issues of American development are to be settled. It has more in common with all parts of the nation than has any other region. It understands the East, as the East does not understand the West. ”

“ Under the caption of The West, we arbitrarily are grouping all of the states lying west of a line running north and south from the western borders of the Dakotas to the eastern edge of New Mexico. This excludes part of that great region long known in America as the Great West,—a country that is no more, and never again can be on the face of this earth, unless war and pestilence one day shall quite remove our present human population. ”

“ It has grown amazingly, and is beautified by stately bouses and fine architecture, and would probably still be called the more desirable place of residence. But the south side has two great advantages—easy access to the business centre and to the great southern parks and pleasure-grounds. This latter would decide many to live there. The vast west side, with its lumber-yards and factories, its foreign settlements, and its population outnumbering the two other sections combined, is practically an unknown region socially to the north side and south side. ”

“ The cities of the East, in need of more fresh meat than the local farmers could provide, found their supply on the plains of the Far West.
Beyond the plains, the mountain regions changed less from the advent of the railways than any other section of the remote West. They had attracted population to their camps during the Civil War, and now they grew in size and permanence. But only such regions reached permanent importance as had valleys to be irrigated and fields to be cultivated. Without agriculture no important region has flourished in the West. ”

“ The essential unity of the movement is brought out by a study of how New England's Old West settled northern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Adirondacks, central and Western New York, the Wyoming Valley (once organized as a part of Litchfield, Connecticut) , the Ohio Company's region about Marietta, and Connecticut's Western Reserve on the shores of Lake Erie; and how the pioneers of the Great Valley and the Piedmont region of the South crossed the Alleghanies and settled on the Western Waters. ”

“ Made up largely of people from the Middle West, this country has taken on some of the characteristics of that region—in the development of small and large centers, and in the improved roads and schools. But on account of the nature of the soil, it will be many years before the Range becomes a second Middle West, if ever. The land will not support as many people per square mile. Much of the area will remain, for years to come, a land of large distances and comparatively few people. ”

“ The vast prairies of the North-West have never, since the white man set foot on the American continent, been at all well wooded, although to the north of the settled wheat-lands there is a forest region nearly fifty times as big as England, stretching from Labrador on the east to Yukon on the west. ”

“ No traditions even of early settlers are extant, and the probabilities are that, beyond a settlement made to secure a site or grant, West Point, being in a region of stratified rocks, heavily covered with drift deposits, and without a suitable soil for cultivation, remained a mere woodland tract, possessing no higher value than attaches to similar adjoining points in the Highlands which have remained unsettled and uncultivated to this day. ”

“ Either no other land ever lent itself so easily to civilization as the blue-grass region, or it was exceptionally fortunate in its occupants. They formed almost immediately a society distinguished for its amenities, for its political influence, prosperous beyond precedent in farming, venturesome and active in trade, developing large manufactures, especially from hemp, of such articles as could be transported by river, and sending annually through the wilderness road to the East and South immense droves of cattle, horses, and swine. ”

“ The region west of the Mississippi continued in the popular mind to be a strange land for which the reports of explorers and travellers did the work of fiction, and Cooper’s Prairie had few followers. ”

“ The impression of the North-west, thus far seen, is that of tremendous energy, material refinement, much open-mindedness, considerable self-appreciation,’ uncommon sagacity in meeting new problems, generous hospitality, the Old Testament notion of possessing this world, rather more recognition of the pecuniary as the only success than exists in the East and South, intense national enthusiasm, and unblushing and most welcome “Americanism.” ”

“ Westward the sun hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean. Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired voyageurs turned longingly westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest run on—on—on—endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. ”

“ On the northern edge of Exmoor, parted from the outer world by a long ridge of wooded hills that die away into a bold headland by the grey sea, there lies a spacious valley—fair even for the West Country, a valley that for its beauty of broad fields and noble trees and old-world villages, may rank among the fairest in all England. ”

“ But when the boundless resources that now lie hidden in its hills and mountains shall have become developed—when the vast plains shall have been settled—and towns, villages and farm houses arise in the lonely wilderness, and the teeming soil be cultivated—who then will be able to estimate the value of this great territory of the West? In ten years, the West will have a majority in the United States Congress; in a century, a large portion of it will contain a population as dense, perhaps, as that of the Atlantic States. ”

“ In our own day, however, the Old West generally means the old cow country of the West—the high plains and the lower foothills running from the Rio Grande to the northern boundary. The still more ancient cattle-range of the lower Pacific Slope will never come into acceptance as the Old West. ”

“ Westward from Suakin stretched the desert, with all that it meant to this man whom it had smitten and cast out—the quiet padding of the camels' feet in sand; the great rock-cones rising sheer and abrupt as from a rippleless ocean, towards which you march all day and get no nearer; the gorgeous momentary blaze of sunset colours in the west; the rustle of the wind through the short twilight when the west is a pure pale green and the east the darkest blue ”

“ The widely-famed Far West is not to be compared with even the tamest portions of Scotland or Wales. You stand upon the prairie, and see the unbroken horizon all round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. ”

“ Looking at the Northwest as a whole, one sees, in the character of its industries and in the elements of its population, it is identified on the east with the zone of States including the middle region and New England. Cotton culture and the negro make a clear line of division between the Old Northwest and the South. ”

“ The northwest was changing to a land of farmers and town-builders, anxious for a market for their grain and cattle; while the southwest was becoming increasingly a cotton-raising section, swayed by the same impulses in respect to staple exports as those which governed the southern seaboard. Economically, the northern portion of the valley tended to connect itself with the middle states, while the southern portion came into increasingly intimate connection with the south. ”

“ As a geographical expression, the west has ever been indeterminate. The east has been treading on the heels of the west, yet never has overtaken it. Latterly, the west has taken ship on the Pacific and through one of the movements of history has overtaken the east. America has put a new girdle around the earth and the west has moved on till it has reached the gateway of the morning over by the Orient. Men of Oregon, of Washington, of California, of Idaho, of Montana, of Utah, of Colorado, responding to the call of the country, have carried the west on over seas. ”

“ In no other part of the chain are the grand characteristics of the Far West more strikingly displayed than from this pass. The mountains here rise on the eastern side abruptly from the plain, and the view over the great prairies is not therefore obstructed by intervening ridges. To the westward the eye sweeps over the broken spurs which stretch from the main range in every direction ”

“ As the Powers finally arranged it, the map of the West Coast is like a mosaic, like the edge of a badly constructed patchwork quilt. In trading along the West Coast a man can find use for five European languages, and he can use a new one at each port of call. ”

“ The Landward Movement West—Two Differing Minds of Civilization, and Two Differing and Independent Movements of Population, Move Westward—The French Catholic on the One Side, and the English Protestant on the Other—La Salle, Hennepin, Marquette, Jonathan Carver, Mackenzie, Pike, Astor, Ashley, Bridger, Bonneville and Wyeth. The settlement of the west, northwest and southwest, from the earliest times proceeded from the Atlantic to the Pacific on two separate and characteristically different lines. ”

“ To get a fair and satisfactory view of the Plain, our route must be to the west side. The east is steep, broken, and thin in depth of soil; the north is, to a large extent, shingly; the west and centre are decidedly the cream of the country. ”

“ The most unhappy in disposition, and I may say, the most malevolent, are the north and easterly winds; the North West winds are powerful, but not unkind; the South East winds vary, but, at all events, we of the South West are considered the mildest and most beneficent. Do you understand me?”
“Not altogether. You’re going right round the compass, and I never could make it out, that’s a fact. I hear what you say, but I cannot promise to recollect it; I can only recollect South West and by West three-quarters West.” ”

“ On their stations at the Ord River these pioneers have been brought into most unpleasant contact with the natives. As we have shown in our history, the natives in the north-west are most treacherous and difficult to control. ”

“ The East is old, pretty fully peopled, and small. The West is new, vast, and thinly peopled. Our rivers can be measured; yours cannot. We are bounded; you are boundless. The West was, therefore, most deeply interested in this system, though certainly not alone interested, even in such works as had a Western locality. To clear her rivers was to open them for the commerce of the whole country; to construct harbors, and clear entrances to existing harbors, whether on the Gulf of Mexico or on the Lakes, was for the advantage of that whole commerce. ”

“ So patriotic and so thoroughly American is the Central West today, that it is also difficult to realize by what a slender thread it hung to the fragile republic east of the mountains, during the two decades succeeding the Revolutionary War. The whole world looked upon the East and West as realms distinct as Italy and France, and for the same geographical reason. ”

“ As far as the eye could reach to the south-south-east and south-west was one vast level expanse of magnificent feeding ground, and at our feet a running stream, which we could trace far out into the distance. ”

“ Not the railway, not the cattle trail, not the path of forward-marching empire purposely hewing a way through the wilderness, opened the West. It was the fur trade that found the West. It was the fur trade that explored the West. It was the fur trade that wrested the West from savagery. The beginning was in the little fort built by Radisson and Groseillers. No great factor in human progress ever had a more insignificant beginning. ”