Under all circumstances, therefore, I must assume that he expects me to confine my remarks to something of an elaboration of the details of the construction of those lines with which I was personally identified, more especially that which first of all linked the two oceans together. . . .

When I first saw the country west of the Missouri River it was without civil government, inhabited almost exclusively by Indians.  The few white men in it were voyageurs, or connected in some way with the United States army.  It was supposed to be uninhabitable, without any natural resources or productiveness, a vast expanse of arid plains, broken here and there with barren, snow-capped mountains.  Even Iowa was unsettled west of the Des Moines River.

It cost the government in those days from one to two cents per pound to haul freight one hundred miles to supply its posts; and I was at one time in the country between the Humboldt and the Platte nearly eight months without seeing a white man other than my own employees.

        Now, from the Missouri River to the Pacific, from the Red River
        and the Rio Grande to the British possessions, the territory
        is all under civil law.

The vast region is traversed its entire length by five great transcontinental lines of railroad.  There is hardly a county in it not organized, and it is safe to say that there is not a township that is without an occupant.  Its plains teem with all the products grown east of the Missouri River.  It has become the great corn and wheat producing belt of the United States; its mountains are the producers of millions upon millions of the precious ores, and from every range and valley iron and coal in immense quantities are being mined.

It is said that a railroad enhances ten times the value of the country through which it runs and which it controls, but the value of this country has been enhanced hundreds of times.  The government has reaped from it a thousand-fold for every dollar it has expended; and the Pacific roads have been the one great cause that made this state of affairs possible.  The census of 1890 will place, in this territory, fifteen million of people, and in twenty years it will support forty million.

It is difficult, I doubt not, for you to comprehend the fact that the first time I crossed the Missouri River was on a raft, and at the point where stands the city of Omaha to-day.  That night I slept in the teepee of an Omaha Indian.

When I crossed my party over to make the first explorations not one of us had any knowledge of Indians, of the Indian language, or of plains craft.  The Indians surrounded our wagons, took what they wanted, and dubbed us squaws.  In my exploring, ahead and alone, I struck the Elkhorn River about noon.  Being tired, I hid my rifle, saddle, and blanket,