Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes, And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream ran by; But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to shallows-- And I dropped again on desert, blasted earth, and blasting sky.... I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by them; I remember seeing faces, hearing voices through the smoke; I remember they were fancy--for I threw a stone to try ’em. ‘Something lost behind the Ranges,’ was the only word they spoke. I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw. Very full of dreams that desert: but my two legs took me through it ... And I used to watch ’em moving with the toes all black and raw. But at last the country altered--White man’s country past disputing-- Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind-- There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting, Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find. Thence I ran my first rough survey--chose my trees and blazed and ringed ’em-- Week by week I pried and sampled--week by week my findings grew. Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom! But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two! Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow-slide shivers-- Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains, Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers, And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains! ’Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between ’em; Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour; Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen ’em-- Saw the plant to feed a people--up and waiting for the power! Well I know who’ll take the credit--all the clever chaps that followed-- Came, a dozen men together--never knew my desert fears; Tracked me by the camps I’d quitted, used the water-holes I’d hollowed. They’ll go back and do the talking. They’ll be called the Pioneers! They will find my sites of townships--not the cities that I set there. They will rediscover rivers--not my rivers heard at night. By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there, By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright. Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget--(barring samples)? No, not I. Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn’t understand it. You go up and occupy.