He did not know then as we do now, that the agricultural products of the territory would at some future time prove of far greater value than her minerals. While millions have been torn from the ribs of the rock bound mountains, in the form of mineral wealth, there is within the radius of five hundred miles of where I am sitting, vastly more millions taken from the soil in the form of farm products.

The Dreamers of national greatness, the Dreamers of yellow gold, the Dreamers of religious fervor, who streamed through western Nebraska, knew not of the untold wealth beneath their feet. Most of them were ignorant of the magic of irrigation, or the tremendous fertility of the soil on which they daily tread.

It is probable that the definite purpose of the people who passed up along the "broad flat

water" impoverished many, that, had they paused here on their journey, would have been lords of the land.

I remember one story told that probably has its prototype with slight variations by half a million or a million people. Robert Weller, a few years ago (1916) was living at Thermopolis, and his experience in 1847 seems incredible. He lived at Macomb, Illinois, and became imbued with the spirit of Oregon. Having little means, he obtained a second hand light wagon and harness and a pair of dilapidated mules. With this outfit he began a journey of three thousand miles through an Indian infested and mountainous region. One of the mules had in its young days injured one front leg, and it lacked about three inches of being the length of the other. To overcome this, he invented a raised shoe -- a shoe which made up the height necessary that the mule might walk on an even keel, so to speak.