Читать книгу The Overland Trail онлайн

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“The vital question with you and me and with every American now is, ‘Will the warp hold?’ It will, provided we can keep alive the sacred stories of the pioneer builders of this nation in the hearts of American boys and girls. If we would save our country we must see to it that we save this invaluable heritage. An incident comes to my mind which would serve to make concrete the thought I would impress. It chances that recently I was giving an address in a high school in the Bronx, New York City, on America’s Greatest Trail. At the close of this address there came to me a young man, whose name was so foreign that I could not pronounce it, and he said with tears in his voice, ‘Mr. Driggs, if we could have our history taught to us like that, we would feel like saluting the flag. They tell us to salute the flag. We don’t know what they are talking about.’ ”

Could Americans grasp what an enormous achievement that was—accomplishing in a hundred years what neither Europe nor Asia had achieved in four thousand years—the Oregon Trail would be marked as one of the most famous in history. It would be regarded from end to end as the fulfilment of that Divine Prophecy “when His Dominions shall extend from the rivers to the ends of the earth.” It would be beautified, revered, consecrated as a Great National Highway. It would be visited and traversed by every traveler in the land. And it was not built by slave labor as were older highways in ancient lands. It was cut across the sand-blown desert, hewn through the solid rocks of the mountain passes, sculptured against the walls of river canyons by wagon rims of the penniless pioneer going West, ever West; of his Divine urge following the fantom hopes of his own heart to a Newer, Better, Promised Land.