13 The Covered Wagon

Not so many years ago the Mississippi River was the far edge of the United States. Beyond the Mississippi it was wild, wilder, wilder-ness. Few people had ever been all the way across our country to the Pacific Ocean. There were wild Indians, wild animals, and high, high mountains in the way. Why did people want to go across the country anyway, and what sort of people were they? They were hunters who wanted to hunt wild animals, they were missionaries who wanted to make the Indians Christians, and they were people who were just inquisitive and who wanted to see what the wilderness was like.

Then one day a man told another, that another man had told him, that another man had told him, that still another man had told him that he had found gold in California, a land way off on the edge of the Pacific Ocean—plenty of gold; all you had to do was to dip it up in pans out of the rivers and pick it out of the sand and water.

Gold! Gold! It was almost as if some one had cried Fire! Fire! Thousands of people dropped their tools, stopped their farming, shut up their shops, loaded their beds and cooking things on wagons, put a cover over the wagon so that they could live under it as under a tent, took along a gun, and rushed for the Far West to hunt for gold. There were no roads, there were no bridges, there were no sign-boards to tell which was the right way—it was just wild, wilder, wilder-ness. For months and months they traveled. Many of them died of sickness, many were killed by the Indians, many were drowned in crossing rivers, many lost their way and died of starvation or of thirst—but many also, at last, reached California, found gold just where they heard it was to be found, and made their fortunes. This was in the year 1849, so these people who went West were called “Forty-niners.”

Since that time roads and railroads have been made all the way across the country; great cities have been built where once was only wilderness; and the wild Indians have been tamed. The United States has given the Indians large pieces of land to pay them for having taken other land away from them. These places given to the Indians are called “Reservations,” because they are reserved for them, just as a seat in the theater that is reserved for a person is called a “reserved seat.”

The first railroad to the Pacific coast took the middle route from Chicago to San Francisco. But you can now take a train from Chicago and cross to the Pacific by the north, middle, or south. It took months when the “Forty-niners” went across in their covered wagons, but now it takes less than one day by airplane.

People used to say, “Go West, Young Man, if you want to make a fortune,” and many thousands did go West, not looking for gold, but for farm lands, which were given them free by the United States if they would raise crops. Some of these men who went to Oklahoma and Texas and other places, chiefly west of the Mississippi, found oil oozing out of the ground on their farms. This oil spoiled the land for farming and made the water unfit even for the horses and cows to drink. The land was ruined—no good—so many farmers gave up and moved away.

There are three kinds of oil in the World—vegetable, animal, and mineral. Did you ever play the game called Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral? It's a good game. The “Old Man” shouts, “Vegetable!” and you must name a vegetable, any vegetable—“potato,” for instance—before he can count ten. Or he shouts, “Mineral!” or “Animal!” and you must name a mineral or an animal before he counts ten. In this game a mineral is anything that isn't animal or vegetable. But no matter whether he says “Animal,” “Vegetable,” or “Mineral,” you will always be right if you say, “Oil!” for it is one of the few things in the World that can be all three.

The oil from vegetables, like olive oil, and the oil from animals, like cod-liver oil, is good for food, but mineral oil from the rocks under the ground is not good for food. But some one found out that mineral oil could be burned to give light and heat, and then the automobile was invented, and from this mineral oil was made the gasoline to run automobiles. Many other things are now made from this kind of oil—medicine, colors for dyeing, and even perfumes.

People who thought their farms had been spoiled by oil found that the oil was worth a fortune, worth much more than what they could make out of chickens and pigs, or corn and wheat. Some wells had to be dug and the oil pumped up, but others sprouted up like fountains—these were called gushers.

This oil that comes out of the rock underneath the ground is called petroleum, which means rock oil. Some of the petroleum companies are nicknamed “Pete” for short, which is a pretty good name because Pete means “rock.”

If you take a train by the middle route you cross Iowa, the Corn State, passing through endless fields of corn. You next cross Nebraska and gradually rise higher and higher as the ground slopes gently upward, until you reach the State called Colorado. Colorado means “color red.” Colorado is at the foot of the highest mountains in America—they are called the Rocky Mountains. The capital of Colorado is Denver and Denver is just about half-way from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean.

Not so far from Denver you can climb to the top of a Rocky Mountain peak, if you want to and if you have a good heart. The first man who tried to climb this mountain was named Pike, but he gave it up, so ever since it has been called “Pike's Peak.” When I was in school we used to try to say this “tongue-twister”: “Speak Pike, Speak Pike, Speak Pike” over and over as fast as we could without saying“Pike's Peak.” We couldn't do it—neither can you! Pike couldn't climb to the top of his mountain, but nowadays thousands of people climb to the top each year just as a “stunt” to see in how many hours they can do it. Pike's Peak is so high that there is snow on the top in the summer as well as in the winter, and it is so high in the air that there is very little air to breathe when you are at the top. A great many people cannot stand it at the top; they have to sit down. They gasp for breath as if they had been running, or like a fish out of water;their hearts beat fast and so hard they can hear it drumming in their ears, and they feel faint and weak. There are now an auto road and a railway up to the top, so that you don't have to climb Pike's Peak if you don't want to. The railway track, however, is so steep that an ordinary railway car would slide down like a sled, so the track has small iron steps between the rails, and the car has a wheel that catches into the steps so that it cannot slip backward or run away down-hill—it walks up and down the steps.