Here upon the Brink of the Plains Which stretched away pathless, treeless, boundless, Ended their century-long exodus The New Children of the Wilderness, Driven by the Hand of God Westward and ever Westward Till they have at last entered Into the full Heritage of those Who, first of Pioneers, Traced the rivers and lakes of this Valley Between the eternal mountains. CHAPTER VIII THE PARCELLING OF THE DOMAIN The domain of Louis XIV in the midst of America (between the Great Lakes and the gulf, the Alleghanies and the Rockies) embraced over seven hundred and fifty million acres. One-half of it, roughly, was covered with giant forests inhabited by fur-bearing animals with opulence upon their backs. One-half was covered with vegetation, varying from the luxuriant prairie grass to the sage-brush of the shadeless plains, plains roamed by beasts clothed with valuable robes. Two-thirds of this domain was arable, with only the irrigation of the clouds, and all of it was destined some day to be cultivated, the clouds having the assistance of man-made irrigation or dry farming. The portion east of the Mississippi (about three hundred million acres) was at one time estimated to be worth not more, politically and physically, than the island of Guadeloupe-an island represented by a pin- head on an ordinary map-producing forty thousand tons of sugar and about two million pounds each of coffee and cocoa. Even the people of the Atlantic States were accused by westerners as late as 1786 of threatening secession and of being as ignorant of the trans- Alleghany country as Great Britain had been of America, and as inconsiderate. The western half, urged by the minister of Louis XV upon Spain after sixty or seventy millions of francs had been spent fruitlessly upon it by France, recovered by Napoleon and sold to the United States for one-fourth of the amount that was expended a century later for the celebration of the purchase, was regarded at the time of the purchase, even by many seacoast Americans, as useless, except as it secured control of the mouth of the Mississippi. An important New York paper said editorially: