By the war with Mexico, we had acquired, as we have seen, territory almost equal in extent to that we already possessed.  It was seen that the volunteers of the Mexican war largely composed the pioneers to settle up the Pacific coast country.  Their numbers, however, were scarcely sufficient to be a nucleus for the population of the important points of the territory acquired by that war.  After our rebellion, when so many young men were at liberty to return to their homes, they found they were not satisfied with the farm, the store, or the work-shop of the villages, but wanted larger fields.  The mines of the mountains first attracted them; but afterwards they found that rich valleys and productive grazing and farming lands were there.  This territory, the geography of which was not known to us at the close of the rebellion, is now as well mapped as any portion of our country.  Railroads traverse it in every direction, north, south, east, and west.  The mines are worked.  The high lands are used for grazing purposes, and rich agricultural lands are found in many of the valleys.  This is the work of the volunteer.  It is probable that the Indians would have had control of these lands for a century yet but for the war.  We must conclude, therefore, that wars are not always evils unmixed with some good.

Prior to the rebellion the great mass of the people were satisfied to remain near the scenes of their birth.  In fact an immense majority of the whole people did not feel secure against coming to want should they move among entire strangers.  So much was the country divided into small communities that localized idioms had grown up, so that you could almost tell what section a person was from by hearing him speak.  Before, new territories were settled by a “class”; people who shunned contact with others; people who, when the country began to settle up around them, would push out farther from civilization.  Their guns furnished meat, and the cultivation of a very limited amount of the soil, their bread and vegetables.  All the streams abounded with fish.  Trapping would furnish pelts to be brought into the States once a year, to pay for necessary articles which they could not raise—­powder, lead, whiskey, tobacco and some store goods.  Occasionally some little articles of luxury would enter into these purchases—­a quarter of a pound of tea, two or three pounds of coffee, more of sugar, some playing cards, and if anything was left over of the proceeds of the sale, more whiskey.

Little was known of the topography of the country beyond the settlements of these frontiersmen.  This is all changed now.  The war begot a spirit of independence and enterprise.  The feeling now is, that a youth must cut loose from his old surroundings to enable him to get up in the world.  There is now such a commingling of the people that particular idioms and pronunciation are no longer localized to any great extent; the country has filled up “from the centre all around to the sea”; railroads connect the two oceans and all parts of the interior; maps, nearly perfect, of every part of the country are now furnished the student of geography.