If the atmosphere of the Elizabethan Age still may be found in
the forgotten Cumberlands, let us lay claim to kinship with
yonder roystering heroes of a gallant day; for this was ever the
atmosphere of our own frontier. To feel again the following
breezes of the Golden Hind, or see again, floating high in the
cloudless skies, the sails of the Great Armada, was the privilege
of Americans for a double decade within the memory of men yet
living, in that country, so unfailingly beloved, which we call
the Old West of America.
Chapter II. The Range
When, in 1803, those two immortal youths, Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark, were about to go forth on their great journey
across the continent, they were admonished by Thomas Jefferson
that they would in all likelihood encounter in their travels,
living and stalking about, the mammoth or the mastodon, whose
bones had been found in the great salt-licks of Kentucky. We
smile now at such a supposition; yet it was not unreasonable
then. No man knew that tremendous country that lay beyond the
mouth of the Missouri.
The explorers crossed one portion of a vast land which was like
to nothing they had ever seen--the region later to become the
great cattle-range of America.
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