Editorial note — Chapter III · THE OREGON TRAIL

Pray you yet again, remember this great American date of 1834, and you shall be quit of all others, all those telling of wars and politics. That was the year when the beaver trapping ceased to be profitable, when the trappers came in, when the wild West began to become the civilized West. This date, remembered philosophically, will prove of the utmost service in retaining a connected idea of the settlement of the West. It has bearings both upon the past and upon the future. It is a milestone marking the parting of the ways.